An Elemental Edventure
by Kit Lupin
Summary: A crossover with the online card game Elements, by Zanzarino Design, and Yun Kouga's Akuma no Riddle. When the Eds chance upon 3 strange spheres one day, they are transported to the world of Latora, and must work together to return home. However, the other kids of the cul-de-sac have been brought to Latora as well. What is the meaning behind this? How will these events unfold?
1. The Beginning

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin

Author's Note: This is a redone version of a very, VERY old story I tried to write on my old account. In the original, I barely got past one chapter before giving up and getting rid of it, being the dumb twelve-year-old I was. I shudder to remember the quality of my work back then. At any rate, you might be wondering just what "Elements" is. It's a free online trading card game similar to Magic: The Gathering, or perhaps Yu-Gi-Oh. You command the twelve elements in the form of cards to defeat a series of computer-controlled opponents. You can also play in a PVP arena, or against friends. That said, there's no true story behind the game, so I decided to make one up for the purpose of this fanfic. I hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I own neither Ed, Edd, 'n Eddy nor the game Elements. EE'nE belongs to Danny Antonucci and AKA Cartoon, and Elements belongs to Zanzarino Design.

* * *

"What ARE these things anyway?" Eddy demanded, examining the spheres.

"Patience, Eddy," Edd replied evenly, looking at them through his magnifying glass. "I'm trying to determine that for myself. Hmm, let's see..."

Eddy groaned, smoothed down his yellow polo, and examined his fingernails impatiently. "Well, hurry it up, will ya? I'm not sitting here all day when there are pigeons ripe for the plucking!"

Edd just sighed and continued his examination.

Earlier that fine Saturday morning, Eddy had found something strange while walking down the street. It was a light blue ball, about the size of a baseball, with an icon of two wings inside. When he picked it up, it felt light, almost weightless. It felt like it was made of plastic, and seemed to emanate a soft glow. His first thought, of course, was to sell it for cash, to buy the succulent, sugary goodness that was the coveted jawbreaker, his favorite candy. However, this thought was dampened by the fact that he didn't even know what it was, and thus could not estimate how much his neighbors would buy it for. Thus, he decided to go to the house of his friend Edd (more commonly known as "Double D"), in hopes that the scientific sock-head would be able to puzzle the mystery of the sphere out.

"So why do YOU have one too, Double D?" Eddy asked after a minute or two of Edd's examinations.

Edd just shrugged. "I honestly have no clue, Eddy," he said in his high-pitched voice, writing something down in a notebook. "I woke up this morning and found it on my window sill." Indeed, Edd had found a sphere as well. His was a pinkish purple color, with a white starburst inside. It quivered and vibrated constantly and would occasionally produce odd beeping noises. "Curious... very curious indeed..." Edd murmured as he picked the purple orb up, weighing it in his hand before putting it back down. "Well, I've come to a conclusion."

"You have!?" Eddy's eyes lit up and he leaned forward, eager to hear what his chum had come up with.

"Yes, I definitely have!" Edd turned to face Eddy. "I have absolutely no idea what these silly things are."

Eddy's face fell. "Really?"

"Really," Edd confirmed. "They appear to be made of a material unlike any other on the planet, one that gives off its own light without any sort of an electric current or bioluminescent bacteria or anything. This is really quite strange, Eddy. What if there are more? We should give them to a university to study and find out more."

"Not if they won't pay," Eddy groused. "Whaddaya think they'd sell for?"

"It's hard to tell. To most adults I'd imagine they resemble playthings- certainly not something worth money." Edd sighed. "The most value I'd say they have is for a game of catch."

"No chance of swimmin' in jawbreakers any time soon, then." Eddy turned away. "C'mon, let's go find Ed so we can play at the junkyard or somethin'."

It was then that Ed, the third member of the notorious group known as the "Eds", decided to make his presence known. By breaking down Edd's door. "Hiya, guys!" the yellow-skinned yutz said jauntily as he entered, oblivious to the destruction of his pal's door.

"ED!" Edd yelped angrily. "What have I told you about barging in like that!? Mother and Father must spend a hundred dollars a month getting that door fixed!"

Ed fidgeted with his olive-colored windbreaker. "Sorry, Double D," he apologized. "I just wanted to show you guys this neat thing I found!" The redhead reached into his pocket and procured a sphere much like those of Edd and Eddy's. This one was teal and seemed to give off a brighter light than the others. Inside was a darker teal icon, a four-pointed star with a white ring around it.

"Great, another glowing ball," Eddy grumbled, picking the blue ball off of Edd's desk and stashing it in his pants pocket. "Where'd ya find that thing?"

"It was in my tub of gravy!" Ed proclaimed happily. Quietly, Edd and Eddy grimaced at the mention of the gravy-filled bathtub in Ed's bathroom. "It looks like the Orb of Power from Revenge of Dragulon Two: The Revenge! Cool, right?"

The other two just shrugged. "Whaddaya say we go down to the junkyard 'n goof off, Ed?" Eddy asked.

Edd chuckled. "What, no scamming today?"

"Nah, this sphere business is givin' me a headache. I figure we should just take it easy for the day," the diminutive schemer answered.

"You're the man with the plan, Eddy," Ed agreed.

* * *

As they proceeded down the cul-de-sac to the junkyard, the Eds chatted more about the spheres. Well, Ed offered his own opinion on them as the other two listened.

"So in the movie, the Orb of Power was this huge ball of energy harvested from the surface of the planet Gingersnap, used by Dragulon Gigas to fuel his warship, the Destroyer 5000!" Ed said. "Ours must be the portable versions."

"A portable fuel source created from the life force of the planet itself," Edd considered. "Interesting indeed, Ed."

"So... like a huge battery?" Eddy asked.

"Sorta. In the movie, Dragulon had to make a blood offering to the Orb of Power to get it to work!" At this, Edd and Eddy shuddered. Human sacrifice for what amounted to an Energizer battery on steroids?!

"T-take it easy, Ed... those movies are gonna rot your brain," Eddy stuttered. The thought of taking an innocent life just to fuel a machine scared him more than he'd like to admit.

"Y-yeah, Ed," Edd agreed, regaining his own composure. "The very thought is preposterous, anyway. Batteries aren't sentient and wouldn't recognize the value of a blood offering."

Ed shrugged. "They might," he said. Then, he noticed something. "Hey, look! Rolf's doing yoga!" He pointed away from him and towards one of the Eds' neighbors. Edd and Eddy turned to see Rolf, the local immigrant, stretching and contorting himself in very strange ways in order to pick up something on the ground in his backyard. A tall, noodly, blue-haired boy with a unibrow like Ed's, Rolf was known primarily for his strange verbal idiosyncrasies, his hard work on the family farm, and his bizarre customs, no doubt native to the enigmatic "Old Country" from whence he came. The farm boy grunted and groaned as he attempted to lift up whatever it was he'd found.

"Hey, Rolfy-boy!" Eddy greeted casually, striding up to Rolf's fence. "What's up?"

Rolf whimpered and gave up, walking over to talk to the Eds. "Hallo, Ed-boys. Rolf was trying to pick up a strange ball that had landed in his yard, but it was so heavy Rolf nearly threw out his back." The foreigner winced, rubbing his back. "Ohh, it hurts..."

At the mention of a ball, Edd perked up. "A ball? What did it look like, Rolf?"

Rolf shrugged. "It was about the size of a baseball, yes? It was orange, and so heavy Rolf could not pick it up! Why do you ask, Double-D-Ed-boy?"

Edd reached into his pocket and pulled out the purple sphere that he'd taken with him on his way out. "Ed, Eddy, and I have encountered strange spheres today as well."

"Yeah," Eddy concurred, revealing his blue ball, as Ed pulled out the teal one.

Rolf blinked. "Hmm. Very strange. Well, goodbye. Rolf must go back to removing this accursed object from the fields." With that, he turned back to the orange ball and bent down to pick it up...

...at which point it flew upwards and smacked him right in the eye.

"NANA!" Rolf howled, stepping away from the ball, which was now levitating in midair. "Rolf requires an ice pack!" He ran inside his house, still calling for his grandmother.

Edd's jaw dropped. "Did you two see that!?" he demanded of Ed and Eddy.

"I saw it, all right..." Eddy's voice trailed off.

"That was so cool! Do it again! Do it again!" Ed said. The trio stared, transfixed, at the floating ball. It, like the others, had an icon inside- this one was a black circle surrounded by four white rings, much like the planet Saturn. They goggled at it for a few minutes, until Rolf returned, a frozen kitchen sponge over his left eye and an expression of bafflement on his face.

"Rolf does not understand this item," he murmured, reaching out with the hand that was not holding the sponge to pluck the orange ball out of midair. "Rolf shall keep it and consult his Nana and the tales of the old country about it. Goodbye, Ed-boys." With that, Rolf went back inside and closed the door.

"...huh," Eddy said quietly. "Uhh... let's go to the junkyard, guys, we're burnin' daylight."

* * *

When the Eds got to the junkyard, their usual tomfoolery felt half-hearted. All of them were still wondering about the strange spheres. Eddy's was the only remotely "normal" one of the bunch- Edd's jittered and beeped, Ed's crackled with light, and Rolf's could go from being ridiculously heavy to levitating in midair in a second flat. This was as strange as the incident with the aliens, and that hadn't even been a particularly good episode. Had anyone else found one of the odd orbs? What were they? Why were they here? All three Eds mulled the questions over uneasily, unable to answer them. Eventually, though, the day passed, and the Eds were slated to go home.

"See you tomorrow, guys?" Eddy asked his friends as they turned to leave the junkyard.

"Yes," Edd agreed. "Maybe tomorrow we'll get something done."

"The menace of the Orbs of Power will leave us tomorrow, " Ed proclaimed.

"Whatever you say, Lumpy." With that, the trio parted ways.

* * *

"Man, this thing's stupid," Eddy said, tossing his ball up and down as he lay down on his bed that night. The pink-skinned lad sighed. "I'll probably sell it tomorrow."

Edd decided not to study his ball further, opting instead to turn in for the night and spare himself the trouble.

"It's nothing but a curious paperweight," he muttered, donning his pajamas and heading to his bed. "I shouldn't trouble myself with it."

Ed nervously hid his ball in his closet, not wanting to get near it. "Molest me no more, denizen of the deep," he commanded quietly before getting in bed.

But as much as the Eds would have liked to leave the business with the creepy spheres alone, said business wasn't going to let _them_ alone any time soon. That night, while the cul-de-sac was entrenched in the depths of slumber, a voice rang out through the darkness.

_Chosen Twelve, I summon thee._

* * *

On Eddy's night table, next to his lava lamp, the light blue ball's glow brightened, and it spiraled into the air as if caught by a tornado. It was followed by the lava lamp, the mirror, and pretty much everything else but Eddy and the bed. Soon, there was a swirling vortex of stuff in the air, the blue ball in the center and Eddy below.

The vibration of Edd's pink-purple sphere grew more erratic, and the ball, now radiating purple light, began to flicker in and out of existence. The nerd's microscope began to melt like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

Ed's teal ball began to let off sparks, drawing energy in from its surroundings. The lightbulbs in Ed's room broke, the electric energy stored within the lighting system lancing out towards the closet where the ball was hidden.

On a desk in Rolf's bedroom, his orange sphere started to levitate again... and this time, it took his sausage machine, his desk lamp, and his desk with it. Soon, Rolf's things were suspended in midair, hovering in place, all surrounded by an orange glow.

Inside a toy chest, a red orb began to burn with the heat of an open flame. Nothing else in the toy box was scorched by the heat, but the sleeping occupant of the room began to feel hot.

In a garage, a dark blue orb grew cold. The temperature in the garage dropped, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until the whole room was encased in ice. A bicycle's chain shattered due to the sudden cold snap.

In a child's bedroom, a black ball drew away light. The radiance of the moon and stars outside dimmed, and the child's nightlight went out. An aura of fear drifted into the room like a silent wraith.

In the knothole of a tree outside a house, a green ball gave off a warm glow. The grass around the tree started growing at an alarming rate, and even though it wasn't nearly time for them to appear, apples began to bloom and ripen on the tree in a matter of seconds.

A white sphere on a night table began to glow with a light brighter than even Ed's sphere, a light that bathed the room in an artificial day. The room's owner, sound asleep in bed, whined in her sleep and burrowed her head under the covers, the luminosity uncomfortable.

In a trailer, three spheres glowed- one brown, one dark purple, one yellow. Around the brown sphere, the ground trembled and shook in a localized earthquake. Around the purple orb, a foul-smelling miasma began to gather, a cloud of deadly poison. Around the yellow ball, time itself began to warp, things aging and regressing at impossible rates.

_Chosen Twelve, I summon thee, _the disembodied voice repeated. _Thy destiny calls, and thou shalt not refuse. _

And in the quiet town of Peach Creek, twelve spheres and twelve children vanished without a trace.

* * *

Author's Note: What do you think? Interesting enough to keep going? I know it was a bit slow, but then this is the first chapter, so yeah. Stay tuned for the next installment of "An Elemental Edventure"!


	2. Monsters and Magic

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin

Chapter 2: Monsters and Magic

Author's Note: From here on out, expect a few subtle (or maybe not so subtle) references to various popular series. See if y'all can spot 'em!

Disclaimer: EEnE belongs to Danny Antonucci and AKA Cartoon. Elements belongs to Zanzarino.

* * *

Part One: Mister Twister

Eddy grimaced as he awoke. "Ugh... What a night, I feel like I slept on top of a rock..." he groaned. The pink-skinned scam artist stretched and pulled his sleep-addled body upwards, into a sitting position. However, something felt... off. For one thing, his bed felt hard and uncomfortable under him, rather than the firm springiness Eddy was accustomed to. For another, it was unusually bright out, as though Eddy had slept with the window blinds open. Eddy groaned again, cracking his eyes open with tremendous effort, forcing himself to adjust to the punishing light of the sun.

Wait a minute.

Was Eddy... outside?

"What the..." Eddy squinted and looked around. Indeed, he was outside, sitting in the middle of a vast, open savannah. In the distance, he saw what appeared to be a idyllic little hamlet nestled at the foot of a tall, snow-capped mountain. The sky was bright blue, a few wispy clouds scattered here and there. Among the golden grass of the plains, several large creatures of unknown species were milling about, though none were close enough to take notice of Eddy. They weren't of much interest to the schemer, though. His mind was more on what had happened, and where exactly he was.

"Alright... I'm stuck in the middle of a field, and there's nothing around for miles but that village over there," he mused to himself. "Maybe I can milk some info outta those guys." He looked down at his feet, to find them clad in his usual red sneakers. "Huh?" Upon further inspection, Eddy was wearing all of his normal clothes- yellow polo tee, blue jeans with wallet chain, red sneakers, et cetera. He felt a lump in his pocket, and when he reached in to ascertain the lump's identity, he pulled out the blue ball from yesterday. "You again," Eddy growled. "I bet you brought me here, didn't you?! I oughta... wait. What if the people from the village know what you are, and I can sell you?" Immediately, the avaricious pre-adolescent got dollar signs in his eyes, and a greedy grin formed on his face. "Bingo! Moolah city, here I come!" He returned the ball to his pocket, and took off towards the village at a lightning pace.

Unfortunately for Eddy, he wasn't alone. Not five minutes had passed before the short boy heard a low growl behind him. Immediately, his blood turned to ice in his veins. However, Eddy knew better than to turn around to look at the source of the growl, like every horror movie lead ever would do. Instead, he ran as fast as he could away from the thing behind him... Only to be dragged back. Eddy was brought into the clutches of the monster and flipped onto his back, where he got a good, long, terrifying look at his captor.

It was a spider.

A really, really big spider.

The monstrous thing had to be at least ten times the size of Double D's pet spiders back home. It was blood red and uglier than anything Eddy had ever seen, with the possible exception of the Kanker Sisters. It made another soft growl and regarded Eddy with the cool, impassive eyes of a predator. Beads of cold sweat rolled down Eddy's face, and he nervously grinned.

"H-hehehe, nice... eyes you g-g-got there?" he complimented shakily, hoping to smooth-talk the spider into letting him go. Sadly, spiders are not known for being responsive to compliments, and all that this particular spider did was lower its face towards Eddy, ready to inject the con artist with its vile venom.

"Please don't eat me!" Eddy begged. "I'll pay you, anything, please! I-I'll give you as many jawbreakers as you want, promise!"

Still no luck- the horrible spider lowered its head further... and further...

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Eddy finally howled, throwing his hands out in a useless gesture of self-defense.

At that moment, a number of things happened.

First, the blue ball in his pocket shone with the brilliance of a thousand suns and vanished into thin air.

Second, the icon that was inside the blue ball appeared on the back of Eddy's left hand.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, a miniature tornado blossomed from Eddy's hands, quickly growing large enough to suck the spider in... and spit it out. The gargantuan arachnid went careening through the sky, flying what seemed to be at least a kilometer before landing on the ground somewhere in the distance with a loud SPLAT.

For a minute or two, Eddy laid stock-still, looking at his hands, totally stunned.

"...Sheesh," he finally said. Not wanting to stick around for fear another spider might come along, though, Eddy got up, dusted himself off, and hurried towards the village.

* * *

Part Two: Brainwave, Main Wave

Edd had woken up an hour or two before Eddy, and like Eddy had noted his own situation. He was currently on a small plateau of the mountain above the village, and had no foreseeable way of getting down. He was in his normal clothes, black "sock hat" included, the pink ball in his pocket. Additionally, he was quite hungry, and had no sustenance. He could see the village at the mountain's base clearly, and the sight annoyed him. If he didn't get off this mountain, he would starve!

"If only I had my inventions with me, I'd be able to get down from here in a jiffy," Edd mused. "This is frustrating... and just how did I get here in the first place!? It boggles the mind to think of what might have occurred during my respite... If I could only get off this accursed plateau!"

Fuming, the gap-toothed genius turned away from the edge of the plateau to observe the conditions he was in. It was fairly small, only about a square kilometer around, and was composed of red rock like the rest of the mountain. Mountain goats trotted this way and that around the plateau, looking for grass to eat no doubt. Edd considered riding one downhill, but abandoned the thought when he realized that the animals were too small to carry a human, even a young, slim lad like Edd. One came over to Edd's side and lightly butted its head against the boy's flank.

"Oh, hello there," the hat-wearer greeted, patting the goat's head. "You wouldn't happen to know how to help me get down from this barren nightmare, would you?"

In response, the goat maaah'ed and butted Edd's side again. It occurred to Edd that the goat was bumping up against the pocket where his pink ball was held.

Tentatively, Edd pulled the enigmatic orb out. "This? But it's nothing more than a glowing ball."

Evidently, the goat seemed to disagree, for it maaah'ed again and reached up to grab the item in its mouth. Edd raised an eyebrow at this, but soon found himself staring in shock as the pink sphere began vibrating like a back massager and shining brighter than before. The thing let out a flash brighter than a strobe light, and the nerdy Ed had to avert his eyes. When it was safe to look back…

"…oh my word." Edd's jaw dropped open. The goat was gone, replaced by a giant bird. It was a majestic eagle, its feathers golden brown, and its wickedly sharp beak gleamed in the morning light. The pink orb was nowhere in sight, and on the back of Edd's right hand was a pink mark shaped like the icon inside.

"_I am here to serve you, milord_," a voice rang out in Edd's mind.

"What in the-" Edd gasped. "Who are you!? What happened to the goat?"

The eagle made a soft chuckling noise. _"I am the goat, milord. I recognized the power of your orb and activated it. You wanted to escape, did you not? The sphere made it so you could. Come, child. Climb onto my back, and I will take you to the human-place."_

"I... I..." Edd stuttered and tried to speak for a minute or two, the former goat watching amusedly. "...thank you." He affected a pleasant smile. The eagle allowed Edd to board its back, and with a few tremendous flaps of its wings, took off, heading down the mountain to the village.

* * *

Part Three: Zap To It

Flick!

"Hello, light."

Flick!

"Hello, light."

Flick!

"Hello, light."

Ed was captivated by the sparks of teal light that were being emitted from his fingers whenever he snapped them. He didn't know where they came from, but the minuscule sliver of intelligence in his feeble mind suspected that they had something to do with the teal ball he'd found yesterday. He had taken it out of his pocket a minute ago and was playing with it when it had flashed and disappeared, leaving him with the ability to conjure teal sparks and the icon in the ball on the back of his hand.

"Ey, Big Ed, whatcha doing?" a hearty voice boomed in front of Ed. Ed looked up to see Al, the keeper of the bar he was currently sitting in. Al had found Ed conked out in the bar and woken him up, and was currently offering Ed a place to stay. Of course, Ed wasn't particularly worried about where he was, especially not when Al had given him a root beer float to get him running at full capacity.

"Hiya, Al!" Ed said, cheerful as always. "I can make sparks from my fingers! Look!" He snapped his fingers and created sparks once more.

Al looked bemused for a minute, but when he saw the icon on Ed's hand, he roared with laughter. "Well, I'll be!" he bellowed. "You're an Elemental! You're a goddamn Elemental!" He laughed more. "Can ya do anythin' else?"

Ed thought for a minute. "I'll think of somethin'." He focused, as deep in thought as it was possible for his tiny brain to get, and...

CRRRRRRACK!

A bolt of teal electricity shot forth from Ed's hand and lanced into a lightbulb, shattering it. The broken glass fell to the ground with several light tinkled, upon which Al laughed again.

"You just broke my light, goddammit!" he guffawed, his plump red face as jolly as ever. "You're gonna be one hell of an Elemental, kid!"

"Just call me Skippy," Ed said dopily.

Al picked up a bar glass and polished it, still chuckling. "Alright then, Skippy. Another root beer float for ya?"

"You betcha!" Ed gave Al a cheesy smile.

"Alrighty, then! One root beer float for my main man Ed, comin' up!" Al went off to get Ed another drink.

Meanwhile, Ed just continued playing with his newfound ability.

Flick!

"Hello, light."

Flick!

"Hello, light."

Flick!

"Hello, light."

* * *

Hope this was good enough for the lot of ya! Ed's part was probably the most frustrating to write, it's really hard to get the feeling of "Ed" and his goofy, loopy randomness in print. In contrast to that, Eddy was really easy and Edd was in between. As for the other kids... well, you'll find out what happened to them eventually. For now, enjoy the new upload!


	3. Another Side

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin (assistant: PrinceOfLife)

Disclaimer: Elements belongs to Zanzarino, EEnE belongs to Danny Antonucci and AKA Cartoon.

Chapter 3: Another Side

* * *

"Stupid leaves, stupid branches, stupid... EEEEEEDDDDD!"

It was a general consensus amongst the residents of Peach Creek that Sarah, Ed's younger sister, was best avoided when irate. Symptoms of provoking Sarah's wrath included lacerations, bruises, cuts, broken bones, scars, scratches, bite marks, and other forms of violence that look funny in a comedy cartoon but are actually very serious in real life. Thankfully, there were no humanoid organisms within a five mile radius of Sarah at the time, save Jimmy, her lifelong pal. The small, curlicued boy cringed and covered his ears.

"Sarah, how do you know Ed did it anyway?" he asked. "He's not even here..."

"Doesn't matter!" Sarah snapped. "This is like something out of Ed's comic books."

Jimmy groaned. "The Eds are annoying, but for once, I don't think they had anything to do with this." He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a black ball with a bat-like insignia inside. "I'm more worried about this thing... it gives me the creeps."

Sarah eyed Jimmy's black globe. Just like Jimmy, even looking at the thing gave Sarah an ominous sensation. She tore her gaze from it and decided to look at the ball she owned, one that glowed with rich reds, oranges, and yellows and had a stylized fire symbol within. It was warm to the touch and gave her a comforting feeling. However, even that was not enough to stop the bitter vitriol stewing inside her, and it soon came out.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!" the small girl screamed. "I'M GONNA TELL MOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!"

"Sarah, quiet!" Jimmy hushed, looking left and right. "There's no telling what's out here..."

The area the two youngest children of the culdesac were dropped in was an incredibly dense rainforest full of large plants, trees, and insects, the last of which were currently making a feast of the two. But the thing that worried Jimmy the most were the seemingly unnatural noises coming from deeper in the forest: guttural roars, beastly growls, the kind of things that made Jimmy wet his bed at night.

Sadly, he was not in bed at all. Some hours earlier, he'd awoken atop a pile of jungle greens and in shock nearly wet them. He was led to Sarah in five minutes or so by her screams of rage- she had woken up in a net of vines and in the surprise of waking up in them she had gotten herself tangled. Jimmy, not really knowing how to liberate someone from this particular situation, started pulling timidly at the vines to see if that would free her.

It did. At around the fifth vine he pulled, it broke with a tremendous SNAP and freed Sarah, sending her toppling down on Jimmy. After that mess, she had been on a tirade, ranting about how this was all Ed's fault.

"Pff. Jimmy, I doubt anything in this jungle has met the likes of me," Sarah boasted, flexing her arm as if to show off muscles.

"Umm Sarah... no offense, but you're a ten-year-old girl who the most she's ever had to lift in her life is a milk jug."

Sarah scoffed. "Jimmy, you know nothing about cartoon physics."

Suddenly, an even stranger cry than what the two children had previously heard resounded. It was nasal and high pitched, and what was worse, sounded very, very close.

Jimmy jumped into Sarah's arms "Sarah what was that!" Jimmy said nearly choking his good friend with his arms strung around her neck

"I'm-" Sarah gulped. "-not sure, Jimmy." Her knees shook, and she cocked her head east to a wall of brush.

"I-It sound like it's coming from that way" Sarah said sheepishly.

"What are we going to do?"

"Well..." Sarah began. She put down Jimmy and faced the direction the sound was coming from. Her eyes suddenly became steely. In the context of the situation, the average ten-year old would be in the fetal position, crying for Mommy to save them.

But Sarah was no normal ten-year-old, oh no. She had a temper and determination that would make Satan himself crawl away in a sobbing, blithering mess, should he see it, and in her mind this thing wanted to harm Jimmy- her best friend in the entire world.

To hell if she was going to let that happen. Sarah turned to Jimmy.

"Jimmy, we're gonna fight back," she said putting her fist against her chest and looking to Jimmy.

"R-Really?" the blue-shirted boy said fearfully, looking to the direction of the sound. "How are we going to do that?

Sarah looked to the trees surrounding them, and saw a branch hanging from one of the trees. She grabbed it, gave it a heft, and it broke away from the tree. The branch looked sturdy and tapered off at the end, forming a sort of handle. It had multiple hard knots going along its length, rendering it a crude sort of club.

"We'll rush it and catch it by surprise," she instructed to Jimmy who was arming himself with a thin branch from the ground, holding it shakily.

"On my count." Sarah whispered as she crouched. She put up three fingers.

"One," she whispered to Jimmy as he crouched beside her.

"Two." Jimmy could feel the sweat permeating his brow running down his face, to his lips.

"Three." Jimmy bit his lip in fear and worry, trembling as he thought of what was behind the brush.

"NOW!" the two children burst forth from the bush with a war cry. Both had their eyes clenched in tension as they ran toward a suprised sound, weapons raised, Sarah was the first to swing her weapon. Almost immediately, she got a thud and a gasp of pain. She heard Jimmy next to her, also swinging at the unknown creature with grunts of determination.

"Keep hitting it, Jimmy!" she barked "Don't stop until it gives its dying breath!"

"Ow! Oof! Ee! Ack! Stoppit! Hey! OW!"

"It can talk, Sarah!" Jimmy said as he swung.

"Yeah, I know, Jimmy," Sarah replied. "In fact it sounds like Jonny."

Wait a minute.

The two stopped mid-swing.

Sarah opened her eyes and looked at the creature they were assaulting. "Jonny?"

"Yep..." Jonny said, his voice pained. The short black boy known in the cul-de-sac as Jonny Two-by-Four was currently hanging from a tree, his oversized head wedged between two branches. His imaginary friend Plank, a board of wood with a crude smiley face doodled on, was on the ground beside him.

"How'd you get stuck like that?"Jimmy asked.

"Believe it or not, I woke up this way," Johnny said in answer. He grunted, trying to free his engorged melon from the tree.

"We woke up in weird places too," Sarah mentioned, her hands on her hips and the club at her side. "I woke up on a bunch of vines, and Jimmy woke up on some leaves." She pointed her thumb in Jimmy's direction.

"That's nice and all, but can you two help me down?" Johnny asked.

"Oh right, sorry," Sarah said. "This is all Ed's fault, by the way, if you'r looking for anyone to blame."

"Riiiight," Johnny replied, rolling his eyes.

The two were about to grab Johnny's legs to pull him down, but were interrupted by an ear-splittingly loud screech, followed by a second.

"Um, Johnny, please tell me that was you..." Jimmy whimpered, quavering.

"N-N-Nope," Johnny stammered. "B-but I wish it w-w-was!". The brush behind them exploded, and two horrible monsters unlike anything the three kids has seen in their lives appeared.

Both of the new life forms were at least four, maybe four and a half feet tall, and had birdlike features. A black feather plumage covered their roundish bodies, with two stubby wings obviously not made for flight protruding from their abdomens. Their heads were held up by a long neck which took up a fairly large portion of their height. They had cruelly sharp, orange beaks, and impassive yellow eyes, as well as sharp-looking, bonelike protrusions coming from the top of the heads. What broke up the general aura of "large, unpleasant bird" that emanated from them were the weird, almost incongruous reptilian elements of their bodies. Each was in possession of a gargantuan tail covered in green-black scales, which swung docilely from side to side. Their long, bony legs were also covered in the same scales, and their feet were adorned with razor sharp talons. Their necks had the same scales too, but what really caught the childrens' eyes was when one opened its mouth.

It had long, glisteningly white teeth.

Teeth!

The creature to the left gave the children a hungry, predatory glare.

Jonny was full-on shaking now, still stuck on the tree and totally defenseless save for the two preteens armed with sticks that stood between him and the monsters.

Sarah slowly brought up her club. "Jimmy," she whispered to her friend, who had already brought up his stick for defense. "What are these things?"

"I don't know, Sarah," he said in a barely audible voice.

The creature to the left screeched and charged forward at Jimmy. The boy squealed and lunged to the side, barely missing the foul beast's sharp teeth. The other animal took off at Sarah, to which Sarah responded by bringing her club down hard on its head. The blow stunned it for a few seconds, and it wobbled dizzily. When it recovered, the monster turned its attention back to Sarah, looking extremely miffed. It opened its beak wide, but instead of biting at Sarah, it rolled back its tongue. Underneath the tongue was a strange, clear tube that extended to the length of the tongue and expanded.

"What the.." Sarah started. Before she could finish, the tube spat out a green liquid. Reflexively, Sarah raised her club in defense. The fluid collided with the club, and Sarah yelped when the club started to hiss and steam like a teakettle. With a cry of "YAAH!" Sarah dropped the club like a hot coal, and stared in horror as the club disintgrated in front of her.

Acid! Sarah thought. What kid of bird shoots acid!?

The "bird" took this chance and lunged at Sarah, her only method of defense gone. It snapped at her with its teeth, and would have decapitated Sarah, had she not jumped back.

The fiery-headed girl heard a scream. She looked over to Jimmy, to discover that his stick was broken a few feet away and the second "bird" had him pinned under its foot, one of its claws right at his neck.

Something very odd happened then.

Sarah, instead of trying to deal with the bird in front of her, moved her hand to her pocket, where her red orb was. She grabbed it and pulled it out. The sphere glowed bright like a fire, pulsating warm energy in Sarah's hand. In a flash, the orb disappeared, and the fire symbol that was in the orb was now on the back of her hand. The little girl looked to the creature that was pinning Jimmy to the ground and thrust her hand at it. With a tremendous roar, a ball of fire shot out from her hand and went hurtling at the bird monster. When it made contact, it ignited. The bird let loose a cry of pain and let go of Jimmy, who rolled away from the blazing beast. It shrieked and flailed as the flames burned away at feathers, scales, fat, muscle, nerves, bone. After a few seconds, the creature fell to the ground, nothing but a charred skeleton.

"Whoa," was the consensus of Jimmy and Jonny. Sarah looked at her own hand, mouth agape. How did I do that?! she thought. The other creature was standing there, just as suprised as everyone else, but snapped out of it, changed its attention back to Sarah, and bull-rushed her. "Sarah, look out!" Jimmy cried. Something then happened to Jimmy. His hand went toward the pocket where his black orb was, and the second he touched it, what happened to Sarah's happened to his. His hand came out of his pocket, now sporting his ball's insignia, and he thrust it at the creature with one cool, fluid motion. Immediately, the shadows of the forest, every dark space where the sun couldn't pierce the green canopy above the kids, gathered under the bird and sprang up, forming a spear of smoking darkness that impaled it. With but a short cry of pain, it was dead, and the shadows returned to normal. All three of the children were completely silent, not a one of them making a sound until Jonny spoke up.

"Umm... can you help me down now?"

Jimmy and Sarah snapped back to reality. They had almost forgotten Jonny was there. "S-Sure," they said at once. They went over, both grabbing Jonny by a leg, and with one swift tug Jonny's head was dislodged from the tree with a pop. Jonny landed on the ground with an oof. He got up, dusted himself off, picked up Plank, and looked at the two before him.

"How'd you two do that?" he said, stunned.

Sarah shrugged. "Your guess is as good as ours," she replied.

Jimmy piped in. "Umm... I'm just saying, but we should go before more of them come along."

"What- oh yeah, right... " Jimmy and Sarah took off.

Jonny stayed behind a second. He fished in his own pocket, and pulled out a bright green orb. It pulsed, giving off a serene feeling.

"Hey, Plank," Jonny said, looking to his best friend. "Do you think this thing'll give me superpowers, like it did for Sarah and Jimmy?"

He cocked his ear toward the wooden board, listening for an answer. Plank said nothing, but Jonny soon nodded. "Hmm... yeah! I think you might be right."

"Hey Jonny! Come on!" Sarah called back.

"Oh, right. Coming!" He placed the orb back in his pocket and ran to catch up with Sarah and Jimmy.

Soon, the three were walking along. "So what happened to you guys?" Jonny asked, scratching his head.

Jimmy shrugged. "No clue. The only hint is these things." He held out his hand, showing the insignia from his orb.

"Weird!" Jonny commented. The rest of their walk was rather tense, with everyone looking out for more of the bird-lizard-monsters.

* * *

I'd like to thank PrinceOfLife, a fan of this story, for helping me. He seems to have assumed the Ascended Fanboy archetype. With him added to the team, it's entirely possible that updates will come more often.

Sorry if you were expecting more Eds, but you can expect to see them very soon. ;]


	4. Aether, Entropy, and Air

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin and PrinceOfLife

Chapter 4: Aether, Entropy, 'n Air.

* * *

"Food... need... Chunky Puffs..." Eddy moaned, clawing at the golden grasses before him in a desperate bid to pull himself forward towards the village. The walk to the village had turned to a crawl once Eddy realized how far the village was. He had originally thought the vilage was only one, maybe one and a half miles away.

NOPE.

One mile had turned to two miles.

Then three.

Then four. The number just kept increasing, until eventually, the pseudo-leader of the Eds was scrabbling at the grass, starving to death.

"How could this darn place seem so close when I first started out?" Eddy moaned to himself. "And worse, I don't have anything to sell now..."

Realizing that talking was wasting his energy, Eddy resorted simply to crawling forward and moaning like a zombie without a donut. Eventually, though, Eddy reached his destination, and he would have jumped for joy if not for the total lack of energy he had as of now.

Looking at the village from his space on the ground, it looked strangely like a town from medieval times, although the only knowledge he had of those were from the dorky movies Ed forced him and Edd to watch. From what he could tell, there was only one street, which the rest of the town was built around, and the buildings were made out of stone and wood. Nothing like the modern-style buildings from Peach Creek at all. Had he gone back in time?

However, Eddy kept on crawling and donutless-zombie-moaning, hoping someone would help him find food. As he clawed his way down the street, some members of the town stopped in their ways, looking down at him, then continuing to walk without offering any assistance.

"Jerks, all of ya," Eddy growled as he inched along. "Food... Need food..."

Eventually, the last of his strength gave out, and he collapsed.

* * *

"Hiya, Eddy!" Eddy heard. The voice was familiar- slow, thick, and above all, stupid.

_"Oh, this must be one of those 'my life passes before my eyes before I die' things, isn't it,"_ Eddy thought._ "I'm hearing Ed in my brain."_

"Umm, Eddy? Are you okay? You seem really hungry."

"Oh, I am, dream Ed. I'm dying right here of hunger," Eddy groaned out, barely lucid.

"I can help you with that, Eddy!" the Ed voice said happily. Eddy heard soft footsteps going away from him.

"Ohhh no. Now I'm going to die here, all by myself, without even Lumpy or Sockhead," Eddy moaned, nearly aproaching a sob.

"Here ya go, Eddy!" said the Ed voice. Suddenly, a greasy fried smell passed through Eddy's nostrils.

Eddy's eyes flew open. He looked in front of him to see Ed- the real, flesh and blood Ed- standing above him, holding out a small wooden cup filled with thick cut, golden fried potatoes. Eddy suddenly felt all of his energy return. He jumped on his own two feet and grabbed the cup

_Oh, momma!_ Eddy thought as he chomped down the on the potatoes. _This is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! _

Revitalized, the short, pink-skinned boy shook Ed's hand. "Thanks, Lumpy. I owe ya one."

Ed gave his friend one of his iconic goofy smiles. "No problemo, Eddy" he said, giving his shorter friend a smack on the back so powerful, it caused Eddy to fall face first back into the dirt.

"%!# ing ow," Eddy moaned. Thankfully though, he got on his feet fairly quickly.

"So, umm. Ed. How'd you get here?" Eddy asked his friend.

"Oh, I woke up in Al's bar," Ed said, smiling. "He's been really nice to me! He gave me free root beer and those fried potatoes that I gave you, really likes Elementals..."

"Elewhatsit?" Eddy arched an eyebrow.

"Elementals! Like this!" Ed snapped his fingers, creating teal sparks of electricity. "Zappity zap-zap!"

Eddy's jaw dropped. "L-l-lumpy, how are you doing that!?"

"Remember those funny balls that I said were magical?" Ed said. "Well guess what they were!"

"Wait up!" Eddy said before his friend could continue. He put a hand to Ed's mouth, shutting the leviathan lummox up. "Those weird orbs did that?"

"Yup!" Ed grinned widely. "Look!" He showed Eddy his hand, now emblazoned with the insignia inside his teal ball.

Eddy thought for a second. "Hey, Ed. Did your orb get- I don't know how to say this? Absorbed? Yeah, absorbed- into your hand?"

"Yep! That's what happened, Eddy!" Ed turned once again to Eddy. "Oh, did that happen to you too? Lemme see!"

Before Eddy could protest, Ed grabbed both of his wrists and looked upon Eddy's hands. He grinned at the wing sign on Eddy's hand. "Cool!"

"Lumpy, you're cracking my wrists!" Eddy said in a pained cry.

Ed flinched. "Oh! Sorry, Eddy." He let go. When Ed's large hands detached themselves from his wrists, Eddy could see bright red welts where Ed grabbed him. "Jeez, Ed..."

"Come on, Eddy, you gotta meet Al. He'll probably give you free root beer!" The larger of the two Eds walked his friend into Al's tavern. Eddy had to admit, the place was pretty nice. It had a quiet, warm atmosphere, and the heavy aroma of liquor, cooked meat, and tobacco smoke hung in the air, an inviting wraith. "HEY AL! HERE'S ONE OF MY FRIENDS THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT!" Ed shouted, and despite how loud it was no one in the bar flinched.

_Must be used to it around here_, Eddy thought.

The man at the bar turned.

He was _huge_. The barkeep was wearing a white T-shirt and brown pants. Under his clothing he was incredibly stocky and barrel chested, and his head practically scraped the ceiling of the tavern. He had jet-black, curly hair going into a full beard and mustache.

"Who's this again?" Al the barkeep asked.

"He's Eddy."

"Is that the smart one, or the one that makes those hare-brained schemes of yours?"

"Hey!" Eddy said bitterly. "My scams aren't that bad!"

"Oho, the schemer," Al said with a hearty laugh.

"He's also an Elemental like me!" Ed held up Eddy's hand, yanking the diminutive little Ed forward and then showing Al the symbol on Eddy's hand.

"Well, I'll be," Al said ,mouth agape. "An Air elemental! Not very many of those around here- usually they're southwest of here, on the Zephyr Isles."

Eddy raised an eyebrow. "W-What the heck are you talking about?"

"Sorry, Al, we're not from around here," Ed butted in.

"I expected as much, given your clothes," Al said, pointing at the boys' clothes. Eddy suddenly felt rather self-conscious in his loud yellow polo and red sneakers. "So, where are you from?"

"Earth," the two boys said in unison.

Al scratched his head. "But you're on Earth! Uh, what country?"

"America," Eddy said matter-of-factly.

Al scratched again. "Weird. I've never heard of an America in my life. This here is the continent and country of Latora."

"Latora?" Eddy said, scratching his head just like Al. "I thought we were, like, in medieval Europe?"

"Europe?" Al said. "What in the name of the Sainted Twelve are you talking about?"

Edd ked.

Latora?

Sainted Twelve?

What was this man talking about?

"Umm, Al. I don't know if you're the person to ask this to, but can you tell us a bit more about this place?" Eddy asked.

"Well, sure! This is the continent of Latora. You're in Castelia village, just east of the Spider Plains and west of Mont Rouge." Eddy shook his head, and then put his palm to his forehead. This was making no sense at all, and his time travel theory was pretty much blown out of the water. So what else did that leave? He was getting one heck of a headache.

Suddenly, the roof of the tavern shook, sending down a small shower of dust and shaking the plates and glasses on the table. A few of the patrons fell from their chairs in surprise.

"What the Flesh Spider?!" Al shouted, grabbing the front of the bar.

"Idunno!" Eddy protested. "Are earthquakes normal around here?"

Loud, cacophonous shouting came from outside. "By the Sainted Twelve, look at what's on top of Al's tavern!" said a feminine voice.

"On top of my tavern?!" Al rushed outside, bowling Eddy over and leaving him on the floor, flat as a pancake.

"Eddy, get off the floor!" Ed said to his friend. He proceeded to grab pancake Eddy and shake him until he was once again three-dimensional, then set the pint-sized con artist down, leaving him to teeter about unsteadily.

"Eeeh, you two boys might want to see this!" shouted Al from outside.

"Whaddaya think it is, Eddy?" Ed asked his friend.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Lumpy," Eddy replied with a shrug.

And with that, the two ran outside.

* * *

Edd death gripped the eagle within a few seconds of them taking off. For one, the brains of the Eds was already afraid of heights, but this was just terrifying. He was holding on to a sentient bird that, minutes before, had been a goat. He was somewhere he didn't know. And he was about a mile high in the air.

"Umm... excuse me, but where are we going?" Edd asked, quavering.

The bird cocked his head to Edd. "I sense two other Elementals who have the same otherworldly aura as you," it said vaguely.

"Oh." That did not particularly answer Edd's question. "Can you clarify on that?"

"Ah, how rude of me." The eagle said sincerely. "I have a particular ability to sense auras of living things. Not very many have it. What it does, is it allows me to distinguish different forms of life- where they came from, what species they are, and whether or not they have elemental powers. These other Elementals share an aura with you, so I'm assuming they are from wherever you are."

"That makes it a little easier to understand," Edd said, though he was still confused. "My, I believe I'm going to need a notepad. Do you know what this place is, er... do you have a name?"

"To answer your first question, this is Latora, the western continent, and to answer your second question, my name is unintelligible to humans. In this tongue, it might be translated to "Crusher of Skulls with Iron Horns". However, I believe Crush will do." The eagle made a noise that sounded like a laugh.

"...oh," Edd said with a gulp. "And how did you gain this, er, prestigious title?" he asked.

Crush laughed again. "It was a title I received due to my status as a warrior among the Highland Goat Clan. I protect our herd from the dreadful Gnome Riders who rampage through the mountains occasionally."

"I see. So that means you are inherently a goat?"

"Yes," The eagle said simply. He must have seen the confused look on Edd's face. "All goats of my clan can shapeshift. It is why we are such renowned warriors."

"Oh. H-haha!" Edd suddenly laughed.

"What's so funny?" Crush asked, cocking his head to Edd.

"Well, you see, I have this friend named Rolf," Edd started to explain. "He's a farmer and a shepherd... I was just thinking how funny it would be if he met you," the nerd finished, giving another giggle. "It would be most amusing, given how superstitious he is." Edd paused. Now that he thought about it, Rolf had found one of those orbs too. Could he also have gotten transported here? And, to add to the conundrum, both Ed and Eddy had also found orbs as well, which meant they were also in this place, but the question was... Where?

* * *

Eventually, they landed, stopping on top of Al's tavern with a dreadful crashing noise. Edd hung on to Crush and reluctantly dismounted, feeling weak in the knees. The populace of the town was gathering around the base of the tavern, looking up at the unlikely duo.

"Erm. In hindsight, I probably should have landed a little bit outside of town," Crush said, embarassment clear in his voice.

"Probably," Edd said as he looked over the town. "Why did we land here anyway?"

Crush turned to Edd. "This is where I had sensed those auras." He tapped the tavern roof with his talon. "Right at this spot, and from what I can tell they are an Aether and an Air elemental, respectively. Also..." Crush paused. " Oh, they're coming outside right now."

Edd looked down as two figures appeared below him- one a short pink fellow, the other was tall and yellow. Edd recognized them immediately.

"My word! That's Ed and Eddy! Two of my friends!" He turned to Crush. "Are you sure they're the ones giving off these so-called Elemental auras?" Edd asked the eagle.

Crush nodded. "Indeed, lad. They're the ones."

As Crush was saying this, Eddy cried out "Sockhead?" Edd turned to look down at his friend. "Whaddaya doing up there?" Eddy looked at Crush with a raised eyebrow. "And why you with a giant rooster?"

Crush looked very offended. "I am not a rooster," he said in a clipped tone. "I am currently assuming the form of an eagle."

Ed gasped. "He speaks like the eagle lord from Attack on Alternia Five!" Eddy promptly facepalmed at his dorky friend. Of all the times to make movie references-!

"Er. What is your jaundiced friend alluding to?" Crush asked with a raised eyebrow. (Eagles had eyebrows?)

"Some crappy movie or another," Eddy dismissed with a wave of his hand. "What are you doing up there, Sockhead?"

"It's a long story," Edd sighed. He was about to scramble down the roof to his friends, when he heard shouting.

"There! Shoot the thing down!"

Edd looked down the street from where he was, and saw three men wearing what looked like the garb of city guards barreling down the street, all three armed with crossbows. Edd's eyes went wide in fear. "Wait! The eagle means you no harm! He's quite amiable in fact!"

"A likely story," one of the crossbowmen shot back darkly. He strung a bolt and aimed it at the eagle. "Eat obsidian!"

All three fired in unison. In a haze of panic, Edd thrust himself between Crush and the incoming projectiles. Before the eagle could protest, a strange, erratic pink light enveloped Edd's hands, flickering in and out of exisence. Almost as if on instinct, Edd flicked both of his hands forwards. With a giant wooshing noise and a crack like a whip, pink light shot from them and collided with the bolts.

Several very odd things happened then. After the light dissipated, the bolts began to do some pretty strange stuff. First, the closest bolt to Edd and Crush snapped, as if broken over some invisible knee. The bolt behind it froze in midair, creaked for a second, and then burst into a magnificent shower of pink-purple sparks, like the Fourth of July miniaturized. Finally and without a doubt most weirdly, the final bolt turned into a chicken with white feathers. The suprised fowl fell to the ground, and after looking around ran away down the street, clucking madly. Ed tried to chase after it, but was suppressed by Eddy.

Edd's face was a mixture of relief and utter and complete confusion. On the plus side, he'd saved Crush. On the not-really-a-plus side, he'd shot pink energy from his hand and destroyed, ignited, and transformed three city guards' crossbow bolts. Heck, the guards themselves were in a total state of confusion on what had just happened.

Eventually, one word came to the guards' lips.

"Elemental." It was spoken in a hushed, almost reverent tone.

Edd arched an eyebrow. "Come again?"


	5. Master Devon

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin and PrinceOfLife

Chapter 5: Master Devon

Eddward "Double D" Rubin, age twelve, was in a deucedly awkward situation.

He was standing on top of a tavern.

There was a goat (who had shapeshifted into an eagle) behind him.

And he had just destroyed the crossbow bolts of three irate guards.

And the townspeople were referring to him as something called an "Elemental".

To put things very simply, he hadn't the slightest clue what was going on.

"Child, maybe we should go down to your two friends," Crush whispered in Edd's ear. "The townsfolk look as if they are even more confused than before."

"R-right." Edd stammered. He got atop Crush, who flew him down off the top of Al's tavern, and next to his friends.

"Er, g-greetings, gentlemen." Edd said to Ed and Eddy, still shaken-up from what had just happened.

"Sockhead," Eddy started calmly. "WHAT THE HECK DID YOU JUST DO!?" His voice rose to a ghastly screech as he grabbed Edd's shirt collar and started shaking the flimsy nerd like a ragdoll.

"Oh, Eddy, do you have corn in your ears?" Ed said, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Double D is an Elemental like us!" he said with a goofy smile.

"Ed, I remind you, we still don't know what the hell those are!" Eddy snapped.

"Eddy, language!" Edd scolded, freeing himself from Eddy's grasp.

Suddenly, a very large man approached the Eds. It was Al once again, who had seen everything and come to investigate further. "Haha, I knew you told me your friend was smart, but you forgot to tell me he was an Entropy Elemental!" he said in his booming voice.

"Entropy?" Edd asked, cocking his head to the side. "The law of thermodynamics which states that the amount of energy released by an object is less than the amount of energy put in?"

Al raised an eyebrow at the young boy's scientific babble. "Ehh, we just refer it as one of the twelve elements. It governs, like, science and mutations and randomness and stuff."

"Er." Edd was not exactly sure this man knew what Entropy was, but let it go.

"Also, while we're here, how did you come across the eagle?" Al asked, jabbing a thumb in Crush's direction

"I am not inherently an eagle," Crush stated matter-of-factly. "Just give me a second to change back to my natural form."

Crush was suddenly enveloped in a bright light, and after the light dissipated, Crush stood there in his original goat form. He pawed the ground. "This is what I look like normally."

"Well, I'll be," Al said, eyes bulging. "A Highland Goat! Haven't seen one of those in years. You fellers used to trade with us, yeah?"

"Yes we did. We merely stopped because of some wars we were having with those horrible Gnome Riders," Crush sighed. "We have been meaning to reestablish trade with humans, but thanks to those dreadful marauders, we've been too busy fighting and repairing our city that we can't do much about it."

Al laughed and then paused, cupping his chin. His eyes suddenly went wide with realization, and he smacked himself on the head.

"Why, of course the boy would be traveling with you. Highland Goats are the race of Entropy, after all!" he exclaimed.

The Eds looked at one another, totally bamboozled.

"Uhh..." Ed mumbled.

"Er," Edd started.

"Well," Eddy considered.

Al turned his attention back to the boys. "Oh, sorry. That must've been very confusing for you all," he apologized, blushing beet red. "You see, Highland Goats and the people in this village used to be trade partners, but a few years ago, they stopped trading. We people here in Castelia Village couldn't figure out why, for the life of us, but as your friend, umm..." He looked to Crush. "What's your name?" Al asked.

"Crush," Crush said in reply.

"Your friend Crush here explained they had been at war with Gnome Riders. Can't say I'd blame them if they're fighting those stubby bastards. They're mean buggers and vicious fighters, especially in large numbers. What's worse, they have an Earth-Elemental affinity, which..." Al groaned as he noticed he was losing the Eds again. "Perhaps I'm not the best person to be talking about this."

The big man paused, cupping his chin again. "Oh, but I know the perfect person to ask! You'll want Devon!"

"Devon?" Eddy asked. "Who's Devon?"

"The town doctor and a good pal of mine," Al said, smiling. "If you want to talk to anyone on anything involving the Elements, he's your man. I can lead him to you, if'n you want?"

Edd nodded. "If we can get an explanation for what on Earth is going on here, we'll take it."

"Good!" Al said happily. "Right this way."

The girl known as Nazz van Bartonschmeer was currently lying down, just now waking up, and from the moment she did wake up, she could tell she was not at all in her house.

From what she could gather as she stood up, the building had a high, arching ceiling and rows of pews going almost to the door. All the windows were stained glass, depicting different scenes in each window. The place was obviously a church of sorts.

"H-Hello? Anyone there?" she called out. No answer came. Nazz gazed at her surroundings more. Light flooded in through the windows, signifying it was morning or midday. This was totally bizarre; she'd been in bed last thing she knew, and now...?

"She has woken!" someone said at last, causing Nazz to jump.

"Our princess!"

"Empress!"

"Goddess!"

"Lady of Light!"

A noisy clamor broke out as several men in monk's robes rushed into the room, fussing over Nazz.

Nazz promptly jumped back as the men flocked to her. "S-Stay back! I know karate and I am sooo not afraid to use it!" she threatened, striking a pose. Before she could release a vicious roundhouse kick, though, she stopped and looked at the men, and her jaw dropped.

The men had wings. Huge, snow white wings that gave a slight glow.

"The heck?" she muttered, looking at the wings. In her hesitation, one of the men grabbed her and brought her forward to the other men.

"See, see! Brother Uriel, the girl looks excactly like Seraphitia, our races Saint!" the man who grabbed her exclaimed to another one of the men, who had what looked like a bishop's hat on his head.

"I see, Brother Raphael. But that is not sufficent enough proof that she is our dear Seraphita reborn. We do not even know if she is an Elemental, and look at the clothes she wears!" the hatted man said, pointing to her black and white shirt and purple pants.

"Well, I admit her clothing might be strange, but I assure you- she is an Elemental. Her orb activated when I first touched her, see?"

He held out Nazz's right hand, revealing a white six-pointed star symbol.

"Where did that come from?" Nazz wondered.

"Hmm. It seems, indeed, she's an Elemental, and a Light Elemental at that," Uriel considered. "This is quite the conundrum indeed. Dear lady," he said to Nazz, "If you would permit us to-"

"HEY!" a loud voice shouted from far away, accompanied by a banging noise. "LET US OUT!"

"IF YOU REFUSE, YOU SHALL MEET THE WRATH OF THE SON OF A SHEPHERD AND SHOVEL-CHIN KEVIN-BOY!" another voice agreed, the banging intensifying.

"Who was that?" the man known as Uriel asked Raphael.

Raphael scowled. "Two _dreadful _little boys who I found this morning. They had found Our Lady Seraphitia first and tried to take her away from us, so I attacked them and locked them in the cellar," he explained.

Nazz blinked. "Two boys?" she asked. "What did they look like?"

"Very odd," Raphael replied. "One had on a cap that I have never seen before. It was red and had a bill on it. The other boy had an incomprehensible accent and hair of a strange blue shade."

_Red hat? Blue hair?_ Nazz thought.

She then let out a gasp of realization. "Oh my God! Kevin and Rolf!"

Nazz wriggled free of Raphael's grasp and began running towards the source of the noise, jumping over pews and bursting through doors.

It took a second for the men to react. They stood there, shocked, until Raphael shouted "Stop her!" Like they'd just been kicked in the behind, they gave chase, wings flapping angrily.

Nazz kept sprinting down the silent white halls of the cathedral, calling out to the boys as she ran. "Kevin! Rolf! Where are you guys!?"

"Over here, Nazz! We're behind some really big door," Kevin exclaimed.

Nazz looked around, and saw a large French door to her left. She grimaced- it was too big to kick open, even with cartoon physics in play. The door had a lock the twice the size of her fist, and Raphael wasn't exactly up to giving her the key.

She bit her lip and called out to the boys once more. "Is there anything like a mallet or an axe on your side of the door?"

"No, just cleaning supplies," Kevin said back.

Nazz groaned. There had to be a way to get the door open!

"Look! There she is!" Nazz whipped her head around to see several of the men were flying toward her on their wings.

And then, out of the blue, Nazz had an amazing idea. She stood there, and waited.

One second.

The flying men were coming closer.

Two seconds.

Closer.

Three seconds.

They were nearly close enough to grab her.

Nazz ducked and rolled just as Uriel and his cronies were about to snatch her up, successfully dodging them. They tried to turn around, but inertia was not on their side, and Raphael, then Uriel, then the rest crashed into the door, shattering it into splinters and freeing Kevin and Rolf, who ran as fast as they could back to Nazz.

"Nice thinking!" Kevin complimented.

"Go-go Nazz-girl is smarter than she lets on!" Rolf agreed, giving Nazz a hearty slap on the back.

Nazz winced at the slap, but recognized it for Rolf's usual affections. "Comes from being a cheerleader. C'mon, let's go before Harley and his Angels come back!"

The Eds, Al, and Crush stood at the front of a small, tidy wooden house. There was a sign with a red cross hanging from a post a little above the front door.

"Is this where that Devon fellow you were speaking of lives?" Edd asked.

"Yep," Al confirmed.

Eddy looked to Al and cocked his head to the side. "So how do ya know this guy?" Eddy asked.

Al smiled. "Besides him being the town doctor, me and him are war buddies."

"He and I," Edd corrected absently.

"War buddies?" Ed asked.

Al nodded. "We fought together in the War of the Bleeding Rose. Now, we're both retired from the military. That war was hell." He rapped smartly on the door. "Hey, Devon! Open up, ya rangy bastard!"

The door creaked open, and a thin old man with white hair and a long beard stood there. His small blue eyes stared up at Al, and his mouth was turned up in a little grin. "Nice to see you, Al," he said, his voice surprisingly strong for such a frail body. "And who're these with you? Travelers? Come in now, I'll brew you a nice cup of tea."

"Thank you, sir," Edd said politely.

"No problem, young'un. Now, I've got a patient waiting for me in the other room, so I'll be a little while."

As they walked in, Devon raised his brow at the sight of Crush and stepped back a bit. "Erm, is the goat with you all?"

Crush looked up. "Yes," he said.

"Oh, a Highland Goat. Sorry about that, didn't know." Devon grinned sheepishly. "But, er..."

Crush shook his head. "Don't worry. Many people have mistaken me for a regular goat."

"No, it's not tha-ah... AH-CHOO!" Devon let loose a colossal sneeze and looked very embarrassed indeed. "...I'm allergic to goat hair." He sneezed once more. "Sorry..."

"Ah. If that is the case..." Crush shapeshifted back into eagle form. "Is this better?"

"Sure, just... make yourself a regular sized eagle. I don't want your wings knocking over my fine china."

Crush nodded and shrunk himself down to the size of an ordinary eagle.

The Eds and Al sat in the waiting room of the building as they waited for Devon and Crush to enter. It was a cool, quiet room with soothing neutral tones and soft armchairs to sit in. A coffee table was in the center of the room, and a fireplace sat along one wall.

"So what was this war you and Devon were in, Al?" Edd asked.

"Hell of a war," Al chuckled. "We were fighting against the Army of Roses, a band of vampires with a few too many bats in the belfry, if you know what I mean, who wanted dominion over everything from Mont Rouge to the Zephyr Isles. Nobody liked that, so we formed an army to rout them and handed them over to Maylis, the Vampire Queen. She punished 'em right soundly and all was well."

"Huh. And were you and Devon on the front lines?" Eddy asked.

"Eddy, I do not think we are in a position to ask that," Edd said to his friend.

"No, no, it's no problem," Al snickered. "Yeah, Devon and I were in the front lines. Can't even begin to tell you how many vampires we killed. Queen Maylis didn't want 'em to die, seein' as they're her species 'n all, but most of 'em were tryin' to rip our faces off, so she made an exception in their case."

"Sorry for how long it took," Devon said as he entered the room, carrying a tea tray with cups of hot black tea and sweet biscuits. Crush followed behind, perching on an arm of Edd's chair. "Mr. Flannigan had a nasty leg wound that took me a bit to heal."

Devon put the tray down on the small table in the middle of the room. As the Eds and Al grabbed their tea, a man walked by.

"Thanks, Doc. That scratch was pretty bad," the man said.

"Scratch!" Devon huffed. "What you had there was a gash like I haven't seen in months, Mister Flannigan. It went from your ankle all the way up your leg, and bone was visible! You would have lost that leg if not for me!"

Mr. Flannigan winced. "Eh, maybe." He gave a small laugh.

Edd raised his brow. He looked down at both of Mr. Flannigan's legs. They both looked totally unharmed, save for a long, thin cut in his right pant leg. What sort of doctor was this man, to be able to perfectly repair such a leg wound in such short time?

"So uhh, Doc, when do you need me to pay you?" Mr. Flannigan asked.

Devon looked at his patient. "Ah, you can pay me whenever you get around to it. Remember, it's eighty-six silver pieces."

"Thanks Doc, and don't worry- I'll get the payment to you as soon as possible." With that, Mr. Flannigan tipped his hat and walked out the door.

Edd decided to speak up. "Mister Devon, pardon for asking, but how exactly did you do that? If Mr. Flannigan's wound was as serious as you claim, not even modern medical science could cure it so rapidly!"

"Oh, it's rather simple. That is, if you have my particular abilities," Devon said. Using his left hand, he removed the glove on his right hand, revealing a blue symbol like three water drops, aligned in a row.

"You're an Elemental!?" the Eds chorused.

Devon nodded. "Indeed I am. I'm a Water Elemental."

"We're Elementals too!" Ed said with a smile.

"Y-You are?" Devon asked.

In answer, the boys all showed the backs of their right hands. "Oh, my." Devon said. "Aether, Entropy, and Air. All very rare in this area!"

"Probably because we're from a separate dimension," Edd remarked.

"HWAH?" Devon exclaimed, eyes going wide. "That's crazy talk!" He gave the three a stern look and put his hands on his hips. "You're just messing with me, ain'tcha?"

"They ain't lying, Devon. They've mentioned stuff I've never heard of in my life," Al said with a nod. "Erm, that brings me to something I've been wanting to say."

"What is that?" Devon asked.

"Can you, y'know, erm." Al paused. "Train them? Teach 'em about Elementals and stuff? Since you're the only Elemental who lives here, that's what I was thinking..."

"I don't see why not," Devon said. "They're clearly wanting some helping."

He looked to Al. "Where do you suppose I should start?" Devon asked.

"Well," Al began, "They don't know much about the Sainted Twelve."

"Really! It's paramount for any Elemental to know about them," Devon declaimed.

He turned to the boys. "And the best place to learn about the Sainted Twelve is..."

"A painting!?" Eddy growled. "You dragged us across the village for a #!$%ing painting!?"

The Eds, Devon, Al and Crush were currently at the west end of Castelia. Painted on a stone building they were facing was a large, resplendent mural divided into twelve sections. Each section was as beautiful and ornate as the last.

"First of all, language, Eddy!" Double D began. "A young child could overhear, and you'd get in trouble with their parents!"

"Hey! Look!" Ed said pointing to one of the sections "That guy has the same element as me!" Ed boasted. Sure enough, a tall, rail-thin man stood proudly in one section, surrounded by teal lightning. His hair was pure white, and his eyes were alight with teal flame. He had long, pointed ears.

Ed gave a somewhat feminine squeal. "HE! IS! AN! ELF!" he cheered, dancing around.

Devon looked disturbed. "Does he... do this often?" he asked the other Eds.

"Usually, he's more into sci-fi," Eddy replied.

"Legolas is my favorite character in Lord of the Rings, Eddy!" Ed said proudly. "And I got the same power as him!"

Devon looked bemused at Ed's statement. "I do not know this Legolas fellow. The elf you see in the mural is Verderon the Wise, the Saint of Aether."

Eddy looked to the section marked with his element. It depicted a topless woman, tall, lean, and severe in her beauty. What marred this beauty, though, was the woman's wings in place of arms, as well as her cruelly sharp beak replacing her nose and mouth.

"What the heck!" Eddy exclaimed. "What's her deal?"

"She," Devon said, "is Mairia the Valiant. One of the Aves... the bird folk."

Crush looked fondly up at the panel depicting the Saint of Entropy, a young, muscular Highland Goat with dark horns and piercing gold eyes. "Ahh, Pierce the Strong. I remember the bedtime stories my mother used to tell about him."

"This is the Saint of Entropy?" Edd asked.

"Indeed," Devon said. "The Highland Goats derive their shapeshifting powers from Entropy, and a Highland Goat can awaken an Entropy Elemental."

Edd turned to Crush. "Is that what you did with my Elemental Orb?" the nerd asked.

Crush nodded. "The race whose Saint corresponds to a certain Element can activate Orbs of the same Element ," he explained. "Since you weren't in a particularly desperate situation, I decided to push you along."

Edd looked to another section of the mural and raised his eyebrow. He turned to the other Eds.

"Fellows, is it just me or does that person in the section over there look like Nazz?" he asked.

All three Eds looked to the section Edd was refering to. They were surprised to see someone who looked like Nazz almost exactly, with the exception of her being dressed in a nun's habit, with angel wings on her back.

"That," Devon said, smiling, "Is Seraphitia the Pure, Saint of Light! Who's this Nazz?"

"Nazz is a girl who lives in our neighborhood," Edd sighed dreamily. "She is the most sublime girl in the world."

"Really, now?" Al snickered. "Seraphitia was widely regarded as the least attractive of the Sainted Twelve."

"No offense, Al, but Nazz is the apple of my eye," Edd said in protest.

"Yeah!" Eddy nodded emphatically. "Nazz is smokin' hot!"

"Yeah, the prettyfullest girl in the world!" Ed agreed

Al rolled his eyes. "Lovestruck boys, aren't they, Devon?" he whispered to Devon.

"Heh, just like when we were their age. Remember Amber Satrose?" he said with a chuckle.

"Ahh, how could I forget?" Al said with a smile. "What did happen to her?"

Devon frowned and shrugged. "Wish I knew. I wanted to ask her out on a date when I was sixteen, but then she disappeared. Not even her parents knew where she went."

"Devon, just out of curiosity, how did the Sainted Twelve come into their roles?" Edd asked, examining the portrait of Verderon.

Devon looked up and smiled.

"Quite the story. Since you asked, I think now is a good time to tell it." The amicable old codger cleared his throat, and started. "Thousands of years ago, there was a great war. This was no ordinary war between the people of our world, but between the world, and Void."

"Void?" Edd interrupted. "What is that?"

"The antithesis of creation," Al explained. "Something made from the leftovers when the world was made. It's total destruction and devastation. It's not like Darkness or Death, which the world needs, no matter how unpleasant they can get. Void is nothingness. The end of existence itself. Even death leaves behind memories. If Void destroys you, there's literally no trace that you even existed. No memories. No records. Nothing."

Eddy shivered. "That sounds awful," he said, voice quavering.

Devon nodded gravely and continued where Al left off. "Void was encroaching on this world, consuming and destroying. Some good did come from it. All the people of the world came together to fight it... but nothing worked. No weapon would affect it. Almost all of the world gave up, just waiting to die, except for twelve individuals, each of a different race. They charged the Void with courage no one could have possibly expected. At the moment they were about to lose, though, something happened. The elements themselves appeared. Entropy, Aether, Water, Fire, Earth, Air, Life, Death, Darkness, Light, Gravity, Time. They all came forth and blessed the Twelve, giving them their own powers and abilities. With this, they fought back, pushing back Void, and finally destroying it. And so, these Twelve were the first Elementals. Eventually, they found out how to distill the essence of the Elements into solid form, and create the Elemental Orbs, to pass on their Elemental blessings. And so, they came to be known as the Sainted Twelve." Devon smiled. "Interesting, huh? I always loved the story as a kid."

"W-Whoa," Eddy stammered, for once in his life speechless.

"Amazing!" Edd proclaimed. "And you say this really happened?"

"As sure as I stand in front of you." Devon beamed.

"While we here in Castelia don't worship the Saints, we do have the greatest respect for them. Hell, if not for them, we would most certainly not exist!" Al said in agreement to his friend.

Edd nodded, and turned to Devon. "I am ready to start training, Devon."

"Same here!" Ed said, giving a salute.

"Me too, I guess," Eddy said with a shrug.

Devon gave a large grin, showing off his small, white teeth. "Great! We'll start in a minute."

Nazz, Kevin and Rolf were, at the moment, running like all Hell was after them. The church, as it turned out, had a mob of people waiting outside of it, who were now chasing them down the streets of the city. Even though they were running for their lives, Nazz had to admit the city was pretty. Everything was gold and white, the late morning sun reflecting off the buildings and making it look like everything was glowing. However, that was the least of Nazz's issues right now.

"Are they still chasing us?" Nazz panted as she and her friends rushed down the gold cobblestone streets. "Because I'm really getting tired!"

"Still- chasing us!" Kevin said between gasping breaths.

"Rolf does not see how Shovel-Chin-Kevin and Go-go-Nazz-girl are lagging like a herd of unshorn sheep in summer!" Rolf teased.

"Well- I'm really #$%!ing sorry- Rolf, but not all of- us are- farm boys!" While Nazz and Kevin were running with all their might, Rolf, thanks to having worked on a farm all of his life, was at least five paces ahead of the two.

Rolf looked ahead and saw a small alleyway. While their pursuers might see them go into the alley, there wasn't enough room for such a crowd to follow, especially not with their wings.

"This way, friends!" Rolf barked. Rolf stood by the alleyway as his friends made their way into the alley. Then, he followed. The three began shimmying down the alleyway, hearts in their throats. Some of their pursuers tried to follow, but thanks to their wings, they could not fit. After the three made it throught the alley, Nazz and Kevin leaned forward, hands on their knees and panting.

"You would think because of how much I ride my bike, I would be a bit more fit than this," Kevin said while panting.

"And I thought being a cheerleader would give me some more stamina," Nazz said in reply. "Anyone got a water bottle or something?" she asked. Her throat was bone-dry, and she was sure Kevin felt the same way.

It was a lucky break for the thirsty teenagers. Rolf saw there was a large fountain down the street. The water that was gushing from the ornate, angel-shaped spouts looked clean and pure.

"Come! Rolf sees a fountain with clear water! Looks good for drinking!"

As Rolf beckoned his friends over, he approached the fountain quietly.

Nazz and Kevin, however, ran towards the fountain and jumped into the spray of the spouts.

As Kevin bent down to drink from the water, something fell from his pocket and plopped into the drink. Kevin looked at what it was and backed up a step when he saw it. It was the blue orb he had found yesterday. He'd found it floating down the creek outside of town while riding his bike, and out of sheer curiosity, he took it home with him. He swore that he had left it in his garage by his bike.

"You have a strange orb as well, Kevin-boy?" Rolf scratched his head.

Rolf fished in his own pocket and pulled out a orange colored orb.

"You guys found those things too?" Nazz said. "I had found one too, I thought it was a diamond or something because of how shiny it was." Nazz looked down at the back of her right hand "I think mine got absorbed into my hand," she said, showing the boys. It had the icon of the orb within it, just like the Eds' had.

"That's pretty weird." Kevin said.

Suddenly, everyone froze, as the clamor from the crowd they'd thought they'd lost began growing louder.

"Y'know, I just remembered. They have wings, don't they?" Kevin commented.

In in explosion of angry yellng, the mob who was chasing the children jumped over the buildings seperating them from the kids, soaring high into the sky. Once they were in sight, the mob of anels made a mad dash at them toward the fountain. Nazz screamed, as did Kevin and Rolf, and all three made a break for it, scattering just as the winged people made contact with the ground.

"Guys, are you okay!?" Nazz shouted from across the street.

"We're fine!" Kevin said. "But these guys are #$%!ing persistent as hell!"

"Rolf agrees! These cursed winged men are persistent as a cow chewing cud!" The farm boy pounded his fist into his other hand.

Nazz looked around, hoping to see something for either escape or to fend off their pursuers. Suddenly, though, she realized there was a bright light coming from her right hand. She looked and saw the symbol on it was glowing. "What the heck?" she murmured. In that instant, her thoughts paused. As if she was being controlled by something outside of her will, she jumped forward in front of the crowd of angels and thrust her hand forward. Immediately a bright white light flashed in her hand, right in the angels' faces. The psychotic mob were blinded by the light, reeling back from the sheer intensity of the flash. Stunned and in pain, they stumbled about haphazardly, unable to locate the trio of renegades.

"Nazz, what did you just do?" Kevin asked, eyes wide as he stepped out of his hiding place with Rolf.

"Go-go Nazz girl shot light from her own two hands!" Rolf said in awe. "Such a feat is the stuff of legends in the Old Country!"

Nazz seemed to come to her senses. "Uh... what?" she asked. "What just happened?"

"You don't know what happened either? You're the one who did it!" Kevin exclaimed.

"You mean that light thing?" Nazz said in reply. "I don't know, I just... did it," she finished, not really capable of thinking up a better answer.

"Rolf suggest we run. The winged folk will only be blinded for so much longer, thanks to go-go Nazz girl's ability," Rolf said with a worried look on his face.

"What- oh, right!" Nazz said still slightly confused. All three jumped as they saw one almost through recovering, and once more, they hightailed it.

"So... could you show us more about these weirdo powers of ours?" Eddy asked Devon. Everyone had returned to Devon's house, and they were, once again, drinking tea. Eddy had given his tea to Ed, finding it too bitter for his taste.

"I will soon, just let me finish my tea," Devon replied calmly. "Though I will tell you what today's lesson is about." He took a small sip of tea, relishing the taste. "We are going to find your styles."

"Styles?" Edd asked.

"Yes," Devon said. "You see, all Elementals have a particular style of using their elements. For example, nobody just goes around shooting fireballs if they are a Fire Elemental. They find a way to use the fire that suits them. Speaking of Fire Elementals, I myself knew one who used his power in a fight by making claws made of fire. It was devastating! All of the slash wounds he inflicted had the power to burn their owners to ash! Useful against hydra and the like, haha."

Edd looked slightly disturbed by Devon's imagery. He had always been squeamish around blood, and thinking about it made him shiver.

"So what's yours?" Eddy asked

"Hmm?" Devon replied, not knowing what Eddy was meaning.

"Y'know, your style or whatever?" Eddy elaborated. At the mention of his own style, Devon cringed very slightly, but recovered before the Eds could notice.

"Oh, just healing. All I really do is heal- I was but a mere battle medic in the war," the old doctor replied with a nervous little titter.

"Bullshit!" Al barked, causing Ed to spit out the tea he was drinking. Devon gulped.

"Bullshit? Where!?" Ed yelled.

"Al, what are you talking about?" Devon replied. "I was only a medic!"

"You weren't just a medic, Devon!" Al snorted. "The way you nearly drowned that one vampire who tried to backstab you was the most gruesome Water magic I've ever seen!"

"Al, please!" Devon begged, falling upon his knees and clasping his hands together as if in prayer.

"Hell, don't you remember your title in the war?! You were the Frozen Blade, the most devastating Elemental swordsman I ever did see!" Al guffawed. "Troops parted for you on the battlefield! The most powerful of the renegade vampires quaked at your coming! Hell, man, you were the one to personally capture the leader of the Bleeding Roses himself- Batlin, who was regarded as one of the most brutal Darkness Elementals in existence- and you took him out! Humph, battle medic my ass."

"Oh, Al, stop!" Devon pleaded. Tears came into his eyes. "I don't want to bring up those memories! I'm a simple man now, nothing more than a doctor!"

The Eds were all wide-eyed in suprise. Not only did Al paint the image of Devon as a great and powerful war hero, but Devons own reaction seemed to make it seem as if he was... horrified.

Devon turned to the boys, mouth turned down in a frown. "Oh, eh, I'm terribly sorry for my outburst, it was very rude of me.. Uhhh..."

Devon tried to search for words. "Let's- let's get started on training," he said in a somewhat worried tone. He downed the rest of his tea in one gulp. "I'll meet you in the fields behind here in ten minutes. Just let me, uhh, recuperate."

Devon left the room and all eyes turned to Al.

"What just happened?" Edd asked Al gently, hopeing not to offend him.

Al sighed, "Devon was a great hero in the war. It just... it took something out of him, it did," Al replied, gaze directed to the side. "He thinks that what he did in that war made him a monster, and he figures if he only uses his powers on the passive spectrum, he'll make up for his wartime mistakes." He shook his head. "It's odd. Even though me and him were rarely separated during the war, he seemed to get all the trauma." The barkeep frowned. "You lot better get to the fields, don't want Devon to get worried not seeing you there and all."

"Got it..." Ed slunk towards the door, obviously affected by Devon's outburst.

Eddy looked to his friends, hands in pockets. "Y'know, my uncle was a war vet," Eddy started. His ordinary, obnoxious tone was gone, replaced by a serious, almost mournful one. "He served in Vietnam. That was before I was born, but my dad told me about it. He said my uncle, when he came back, was really off. He was always sad and never seemend to enjoy any of the things he used to. One night, he tried to hang himself, but someone called him in on suicide watch. The police picked him up and put him in a mental institute until he wasn't considered a danger to himself or others." The scam artist paused. "I think for Devon's good, we shouldn't bring up the war again. Even now, my uncle has bad days like that, and I'm sure Devon feels the same."

"I agree," Edd said, a little surprised by his friend's maturity on the subject.

"Me too," Ed agreed. His tone, like Edd's and Eddy's, was unusually subdued.

The trio soon made it out to the field behind the doctors office, the grass was long and dry, up to their waists. Eddy was somewhat conscious where he stepped, due to the fact that a couple of hours ago, he had encoutered a spider in this very field.

A short while later Devon came out no dressed in his usuall doctor attire. Instead he wore a sleeveless black shirt, exposing a surprising amount of muscle on his thin, wiry limbs. There were fingerless gloves on his hands, and his legs were clad in long, loose-fitting black pants.

"Right, let's get down to business." Devon cracked his knuckles. "I want each of you to show me a example of your Elemental powers. Not using a style or anything- just you, using your element."

He turned to Ed. "You start. Al told me you were an impressive Elemental."

"Okey dokey!" Ed stepped forward. He began snapping his fingers, creating teal sparks flying every which-way.

Devon raised his brow and snorted. "Ed, Al told me you were able to make lightning bolts already. Can you try and do that?"

Ed paused. "Uhhhh..." The lunk cupped his chin. How did he make that lightning bolt earlier, anyway? He didn't think he did anything in particular. Maybe if he thought really hard...

Suddenly, a wild bolt of teal lightning shot from Ed's free hand, sailing right towards the other Eds. Both yelped and managed to throw themselves out of the way at the last second. The bolt struck the ground, leaving a blast mark were it made contact, charring the grass around it.

"Dammit, Ed!" Eddy barked at his friend. "Watch where the #$!% you're shooting!"

"Sorry, Eddy..." Ed pouted and looked away, crossing his arms.

"Eh, that was good enough." Devon shrugged. "Now you, Eddy."

"Well... I only used my powers once up until now, so I'm not quite sure how this will go" Eddy said a touch nervous. The boy tapped his fingers together. Last time he used his powers, he was in a state of panic because of the spider. Perhaps if he thought of fear, that would activate his powers? He focused on what made him afraid, and almost immediately, a terrifying image swam into his mind.

Lee Kanker. Lips puckered, stained fire engine red with lipstick. About to kiss him.

"_**Get away from me!**_" Eddy shot out both of his hands as if to push Lee away from him. As he did so, all the grass within a twenty foot radius of him was sent flying by a giant gale, leaving a bare patch of sun-baked ground all around the trickster.

"Well," Devon said, surprised. "You seem to have a very good grasp on your element, Eddy." He clapped approvingly.

"Heh, thanks," Eddy said, proud at what he had done.

"Now you, Edd," Devon said, turning to the geek.

Edd gulped. "I have the same problem, sir, and I only did it by accident."

"Well, some novice Elementals use emotional triggers to activate their abilities," Devon said. "Were you feeling any particular emotions when you first used your powers? Any at all?"

"Well." Edd pondered that. The first time he had really used his newfound powers was when he was protecting Crush. Was his trigger just protective instinct?

"Here goes, I suppose." Edd concentrated, focusing on the feeling he'd gotten when he was trying to keep Crush safe.

He held his arms out, not really knowing what would happen. The crackly brown grass before him was lit by a pink glow, and the grass began to tremble. Edd noticed that the blades looked like they were getting bigger.

And bigger.

And bigger.

Then, the grass in front front him _**exploded**_ upwards, growing higher and higher until the scrawny nerd estimated each stalk was at least fifty feet tall!

"My! I was not expecting that!" Edd exclaimed looking at the towering grass blades.

Devon whistled, hands in pockets. "That was quite the display of Entropy there," he snickered, looking at Edd.

"...Devon, I did not expect the grass to do that at all. It just did it by itself. Is that normal?"

Devon nodded. "You're an Entropy Elemental in training. Your whole element is centered around chaos and mutations. Eventually, as you train more, you will be able to control what your powers create."

"Wow!" Eddy whistled. "I wish I had a camera! Reminds me of when we made everyone's lawns grow with my dad's fertilizer!"

"Really?" Devon quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Yeah!" Eddy grinned. "We were makin' money from mowin' lawns, but nobody needed their lawns mowed, so we used my dad's Montezuma's Revenge fertilizer."

"Do you boys do things like that often?" Devon asked.

Eddy scoffed " Heck yeah, its the only way you can make good money in our neighborhood."

"What do you buy with the money?" The old Water Elemental crossed his arms.

Eddy smiled, his mouth already watering at the thought. "The best candy in the world- _jawbreakers_!" the huckster said, already thinking of the divine ambrosia available at the Peach Creek candy store for twenty-five cents.

That made Devon scratch his head. "What are those? Why would you want a candy that breaks your jaw?"

Edd put an hand on Devon's shoulder. "It's not literal, Devon. While they are dreadfully hard, you're meant to suck on them to get the flavor."

"Oh," Devon said, now getting it.

Eddy suddenly stopped his musings when he realized something Devon had just said.

"Wait, Devon, you don't know what a Jawbreaker is?" Eddy asked

Devon shook his head. "I've never heard of them in my life," he answered.

"Wait. Then that must mean..." Eddy started putting the pieces together in his head. If Devon said he'd never heard of Jawbreakers in his life, that meant...

Eddy's eyes grew wider than the Round Tower of Copenhagen upon realization.

One of his greatest fears was recognized. The most horrible of them all. The reality-shattering terror that had buzzed in the back of his brain like a wraith.

Jawbreakers did not exist in this world.

Eddy fell to his knees, blue eyes looking up at the sky, arms raised, a mix of tears and snot streaming down his face. "WHY, GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN MEEEEEEE? WHYYYYYYYY!? GUHYAHWAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!" he blubbered.

Ed, Edd, and Devon stared.

"..." was their collective response.

"Is- is he alright?" Devon said, breaking the silence.

"He's just suffering from LJS," Edd said. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"LJS?" Devon asked.

"Loss of Jawbreakers Syndrome," Edd explained as Ed went over to comfort his crying friend.

"Ah. Sadly, I do not know if I can cure that," Devon said. He looked at Eddy, who was now in the fetal position, sucking his thumb, and rocking back and forth.

"Don't worry. He'll get over it... eventually." Edd finished unsurely, not particularly sure how long that would be. "The only other time Eddy had LJS was when a Jawbreaker shipment to our local candy shop was a week late, and it had taken him twice that long to recover."

"Oh dear." Devon rubbed his temple.

Nazz and company had managed to escape the angel mob chasing them about five minutes ago, thanks to Nazz's strange light attack. Now, the trio were wandering aimlessly, taking alleyways and not particularly knowing where to go or what to do, except keep away from the angels.

"Go-go Nazz girl, do you happen to know what we will do?" whispered Rolf, worrying that the angels might hear him.

"No, not at all," Nazz admitted. "I'm just as confused as you two on what to do."

"Well, this is just great." Kevin groaned. "We're being chased by a bunch of winged nutjobs who want Nazz to be their empress or some stupid bull like that, Nazz has the power to shoot light out of her hands, and we're hopelessly lost. I blame Dork, Dork, and Dorky."

"Rolf thinks Shovel-chin Kevin boy is wrong. Not even the Ed-boys could do this," Rolf replied.

Kevin grunted and waved his hand at Rolf in a weird little gesture of exasperation. "Yeah, well what the hell do you think brought us here, Rolf!?" he snapped.

"The orbs," Rolf said bluntly.

Kevin turned around to Rolf, arms crossed and eyebrow raised.

"The orbs? What made you think that?" the cap-wearing jock asked, voice laced with poison.

"Remember what the winged man said when he threw us in the closet?" Rolf started.

"Yeah, he said some shit about 'activating lady Seraphtia's orb'," Kevin replied.

"Exactly. Now, call Rolf crazy, but Go-go Nazz girl could not shoot light before that."

Kevin pondered on this. Rolf had a point: either Nazz had hid the power really well while they were in Peach Creek, or she had very recently got it. The latter was the more sensible of the two to Kevin, since he'd noticed Nazz was confused when she first used her powers.

"And so what if it is the orbs? Neither of us can shoot light and we have them," Kevin pointed out.

"True, but Go-go Nazz girl mentioned hers disappeared and was absorbed into her hand," Rolf countered.

"Ah..." Kevin thought about that. "Good point. So... maybe if we break ours, we'll get powers too?"

Kevin, immediately after saying this, grabbed his orb from his pocket. Before Nazz or Rolf could protest, he threw it at the ground, and immediately when it hit the gound, it did something rather suprising. It bounced, rather high in fact.

The trio watched the orb sail into the sky, disappearing for a second then coming back down.

"I got it!" Kevin excaimed as it was coming down. From what he could tell, the orb was going to land outside the alleyway. He rushed out, pushing Nazz aside as he ran after it.

"Kevin, stop!" Nazz called as he ran by.

But Kevin did not hear Nazz. He was too focused on the orb right now. He could tell it was coming down very fast, and if he did not do something it would probably bounce again. So, like he had done so many times before in so many sports, he dived after the orb, arm extended.

It landed in his hand, and burst into blue light. Before anyone could react, Kevin's right hand was now emblazoned with the water drop symbol inside the orb.

"Ha ha! Now I've got super powers!" Kevin exclaimed excitedly. He wondered if he could shoot light like Nazz or not..

"Kevin! Look behind you!" Nazz exclaimed.

Kevin raised an eyebrow and turned around.

Behind him was a veritable army of angels.

Kevin's eye twitched.

"Get him! He is is one of the pariahs who stole away our Seraphitia!" Brother Raphael shouted.

With that order, the angels charged at the defenseless Kevin.

But something happened.

Kevin shot his hand forwards, and a stream of clear water gushed from it with the pressure of a fire hose, right at the angels.

They were all blown back by the force of the water, sputtering and soaked. Some flew up, still drenched, hoping to get the drop on Kevin, but before they could, Kevin clenched his fist and the water that was on the angels and the ground froze to ice. The angels who were still on the ground slipped and fell on the icy road and the angels flying were weighed down by the ice encrusting their wings.

"You insolent rat!" Uriel growled. "How dare you!? You are not welcome here!"

"And we don't wanna be here, jackass!" Kevin barked at the angel priest.

At the insult, Uriel drew a sword from underneath his robes, causing Kevin to grimace and step back.

"Stay back or I'll freeze you, too!" Kevin threatened.

Uriel huffed. "Not likely. I know you are freshly awakened and that last occurrence was a fluke. You have no training whatsoever in your newfound power, so I highly doubt you could do it again." He gave Kevin a dark sneer. "I will kill you and that blue-haired boy and take our Lady Seraphitia back!"

"I'd like to see you try!" Kevin said, his voice shaking like a chandelier in an earthquake.

Rolf gulped. "Shovel-chin Kevin-boy is sorely outmatched, yes? Rolf shall help." He raised his orb and, with a cry of "SLAHORG!" slammed it to the ground.

However, instead of bouncing like Kevin's had done, it gave a bright flash and vanished. Rolf's right hand was now marked with the symbol that was within it. With that, Rolf charged at Uriel who was right on top of Kevin, sword raised.

Rolf closed the distance between him and Uriel in under a second, slamming into the angel's chest, causing him to gasp and step back.

"A Gravity elemental?" Uriel said in pain.

Rolf simply grinned, then grabbed Uriel by the collar of his robe and threw him backwards.

Be aware, at this point, Rolf had not the slightest clue he now had the power of Gravity behind his throw. Thus, when Rolf threw Uriel, he did not at all expect the priest to smash through seven buildings, eight windows, and traumatize an old woman in the bath.

Rolf's jaw dropped. "By the gods of the Old Country, Rolf did not know he could do that."

"Umm, dude, did you not see me shoot freaking water out of my hand?!" Kevin said as he walked up to Rolf.

"Sooo, I guess we all got powers now," Nazz said. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Uriel staggering to his feet. "Not that it'll help us escape or anything."

"Yeah..." Kevin gulped. "Let's get back to running!"

Kit: And that's a wrap! Hey yo, everyone, Kit and Prince here to chat with ya!

Prince: Hiya everybody. As this being the first fic I have ever worked on I am most excited to hear feedback! :3

Kit: And, this being a very ambitious project of mine, I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say! Prince and I have a lot of ideas in store for this fic.

Prince: Can I tell them some? Please?

Kit: Maybe one or two. Don't give too much away! X3

Prince: Okey dokey. For one, we have a certain idea of crossing over to other properties in the fic. I will not say what but they are common interests of the two of us. Secondly, there will be much more to Latora in chapters to come. We plan to make it as expansive and diverse as possible!

Kit: A yup yup! Please review in the comments box! We super appreciate your feedback. Thanks for reading! Bye-ya!


	6. The Plot Thickens

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin and PrinceOfLife

Chapter 6: The Plot Thickens

* * *

"C'mon, Marie, quit lagging!" The harsh words were shouted by one Lee Kanker, the oldest sister in a trio infamous to the cul-de-sac of Peach Creek.

"I'm coming, Lee! I'm not the one who's all the way in the back!" the middle sister snapped, glaring over her shoulder at their youngest sibling.

"What? These cobblestones are so uneven, it makes it hard to walk," she said at a level tone. The youngest of the trio was always more quiet then her sisters.

"Can it, May," Lee snapped. A tall girl with frizzy, curly red hair that obscured her eyes and golden earrings, Lee was one of the most feared girls in the cul-de-sac, and with good reason. The Kanker Sisters were enigmatic and destructive even unto themselves, and when they were in a rage, the citizens of Peach Creek knew all was lost.

"Yeah, can it, May. We need to get out of this crap castle!" Marie, the middle sister, growled. She had blue hair which covered one eye, and wore a black crop top. Not the kind of girl you want to mess with.

"I know, but this place is just creepy!" The youngest Kanker, May, exclaimed. She, a short girl with long blond hair, buck teeth, and a dirty gray shirt and red pants, was more sensitive than her two siblings, but no less frightening when provoked.

She looked over to her older sister. "Lee, can I have my ball?"

"No!" Lee snapped at her sister. "I told ya already, I'm keepin a hold on them until we know what the heck they are!"

Yesterday, all three of the Kankers had found strange balls, the size of baseballs and glowing brightly. Lee had found hers in the grandfather clock that their mother owned, Marie had found hers while trying to spy on Edd in the shower. May had got hers in the oddest way- it was in the ship-in-a-bottle that the trio cherished.

After waking up in the dank grey castle, Lee, being the sensible one, suspected the orbs had something to do with it, so she had taken her sister's orbs and put them in her pockets,which were threatening to pull her pants down with their weight, causing her to frequently adjust them. What didn't help was that one was ridiculously heavy, the second was making a mysterious ticking noise, and the third stank horribly. Combine this with the fact that it was very dark out and the Kankers kept getting lost, and Lee was not in a good mood.

"Marie, are you sure you know which way we're going?" she said, looking over her shoulder to look at her sister.

"Yeah, of course I do," the middle sibling proclaimed, nose in the air. "This place's design is your run-of-the-mill build for medieval French castles."

For once, Lee was actually glad that her sister had studied medieval times and warfare so religiously last year in school.

"We should be approaching the ballroom, where there should be windows leading outside... We get to there, we're home free," the blue-haired girl explained.

"Good. This #&amp;$!ing place is getting on my nerves," Lee growled.

Suddenly, the trio heard a large crashing noise.

"L-lee, what was that?" May yelped inching forward to the elder sibling.

"I dunno, but it don't sound good." Lee looked shiftily around the ruined castle, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.

Several more crashes resounded, coming from all directions.

"Shit," Lee groaned. Whatever the hell was making that noise was surrounding them.

"Get together!" she whispered to her sisters. At the command, the three sisters got back to back, looking around suspiciously.

The crashing stopped. In its place, a weary, creepy creaking noise, like the sound a old chair makes when you sit in it, echoed throughout the hall.

"Anyone got a flashlight or anything?" Marie said, looking around into the blackness.

"Lee's ball glows a little," May pointed out.

"Oh yeah." Lee took her yellow orb from her pocket and held it forward toward the sounds.

She hald the orb out for a few second, allowing its yellowish light to spread over their surroundings. For a few seconds, she saw nothing out of the ordinary, but soon, something caught her eye- a white, skeletal foot , which went back into the darkness as soon as the three saw it.

"What the hell is that!" Marie shrieked after seeing the foot.

"I dunno, but I don't like it!" May wailed.

Only Lee kept a calm face. However, even she was a little creeped out by the foot. What kind of thing did the foot belong to?

"Whoever's there, show yourself or you'll get a butt-whooping, courtesy of Lee Kanker!" she shouted at the darkness. As if to answer, something emerged from the murk, startling Lee so much she nearly dropped her orb.

It was a skeleton. Its bones were bleach white, not a speck of decay upon them. When it moved, its exposed joints ground against each other, making a sound like sandpaper against wood.

"Oh my god," May whispered as she looked at the living nightmare before them. And there wasn't just one. Two more skeletons walked out from the gloom. Then three more. Then ten. Soon, there was a whole army of the horrible, undead beings standing in front of the Kankers. Grinning jaws chattered at the three sisters, dark, hollow eyesockets piercing them with sightless gazes.

"Lee?" Marie whispered fearfully to her older sibling. "What are we gonna do?"

"I- I don't know," Lee responded with a gulp. The skeletons were moving ever closer, their chatters becoming faster and faster with each step they took until they were in arms reach of the girls.

Then, the skeletons lunged.

* * *

"EEEEEDDDD! I DON'T KNOW WERE YOU ARE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN FOREST BUT WHEN I FIND YOU YOU ARE SO DEAD!" Sarah screamed into the tree tops. They'd been wandering until night had fallen, and all of them were very hungry.

"Sarah, I thought we established that the Eds couldn't do this," Jimmy said to his furious best friend. "You know, Jonny and I think that we got transported here because of the orbs"

"As if! This is just some weird scam that Eddy made or something. He probably put some weird chemical into our air conditioners while we were asleep and used it to hypnotize us."

Jonny shook his head. "I know Eddy. He's devious and creepy, but he'd never do that. Even he has standards."

Sarah growled like a rabid dog at Jonny. "Well if it's not Eddy, why don't you ask your magic orbs?" she said menacingly.

"Well for one they don't work that way," Jonny explained. "And two, the orbs gave you and Jimmy super powers, so what's to say they couldn't transport us here?"

"Well..." Sarah started. It had been about a few hours since Jimmy and Sarah had killed the weird, draconic birds, and the lot of them were still stuck in the forest, just walking in a straight line. They had not seen anything to hint at civilization anywhere and suspected that more of the forest inhabitants would also think of them as room service, which prompted them to keep moving forward, trying not to get spotted.

About thirty minutes ago, Sarah had stubbed her toe on a root and in anger, restarted her Ed tirade, much to Jonny and Jimmy's anguish.

"If that IS the case, then why did they take us here? There isn't anything special about us," Sarah grumbled.

"Well, we all have orbs," Jonny reasoned.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You don't," she replied sharply.

"Actaully..." Jonny reached into his pocket and pulled hs out. "It never came up, sorry."

"When were you planning to tell us?!" Sarah barked

"Eventually. It's just when I first met you guys, I was stuck, and then you had to fight those bird things."

"You mean, the Cockatrices?" a deep, warm voice boomed behind the trio.

They turned around to see a man standing there. His skin was the color of cinnamon, and his eyes were a lighter shade of the color. He was bald on top of his head, but had a very well-trimmed goatee and a dark ponytail in the back. His clothes seemed to be made out of plant leaves, vines, and flowers, and looked as though they were made for an important person. "What are you children doing here? You surely can't be from around here."

The three children blinked. Who was this man and why did they not hear him coming? He was at least five feet higher than them.

"Umm..." Jimmy began. "We kind of woke up here, Mister," he said timidly.

"Woke up here?" the man asked. "Sorry, I'm a bit confused. You do not look like natives."

"Well you see, we came here because of these orb things," Jonny said.

Sarah opened her mouth to shoot down Jonny's answer, but the man spoke.

"Orbs?!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, like this." Jonny pulled his from his pocket to show the man.

The man gazed at the green orb. "A Life Elemental," He whispered reverently. He timidly held out a finger and touched the orb.

Immediately, it flashed once, and disappeared. The orb was gone, but the symbol within, a fern-like design, was now on the back of Jonny's right hand.

"Hey, cool!" Jonny exclaimed. "That's what happened to Jimmy and Sarah's."

"Huhm?" asked the man, scratching his head.

"Yeah, here look." He pushed the two forward so that they were in the man's view, revealing their markings.

"By the Twelve," the man breathed. "You are all Elementals! Darkness, Fire, Life...! It has been years since an Elemental has come to the Forest of Memories!"

Sarah had a look of pure confusion on her face. "I'm sorry, but who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Alvarez," the man said. "I'm the mayor of Bushburg, here in the Forest."

"Bushburg?" Sarah was a tad surprised at the normal sounding name. She expected something more... natural, more tribal even.

"Mister, we've been here all day and we haven't seen any town..." Jimmy said

"That is because my town is merely meters north of here. You probably could have made it there on your own," Alvarez chuckled.

"Oh," Jimmy said, somewhat embarassed.

"Well, you're welcome to follow me. I am heading back anyway, and I suggest you follow. You do not want to be in the forest when night falls..."

"What happens at night?" Jonny asked.

Alvarez smiled darkly. "The real monsters come out."

"The real monsters?" Jimmy said. If the Cockatrices weren't considered real monsters...

"Wait for us, big guy!" Sarah said, running to catch up and the boys following suit.

* * *

Meanwhile with the Eds, they were currently in a sleeping quarters in the attic of Al's tavern. They had finished training for the day and were about to go to sleep when Edd said something.

"...Fellows?" he asked.

The two other Eds turned to their academic friend.

"Do you suppose that maybe something other than the orbs brought us here?" he said.

"Whaddya mean, sockhead?" Eddy questioned. "I'm pretty sure that those orbs brought us here. I mean, they did give us our powers." To emphasize his point, he showed Edd the mark on his hand.

"Yes, I know, but..." Edd paused and gulped. "What if some third party was responsible for bringing us to Latora for reasons unknown?"

Eddy thought about this. He had a point,but they had nothing to prove that as of yet.

"Anything to support this little theory, Double Drip?" the minute Ed asked.

"Yes," Edd said without skipping a beat.

"What then?"

"We had found the orbs," he explained.

Eddy raised his brow. "I don't see your point..."

"Well, think of it this way Eddy. Those orbs could have fallen in to the hand of any average Joe. Instead, they were put in places where we, specifically, could find them." Edd paused, letting it sink in.

"So, someone wanted us here on purpose?" Ed piped up, startling both.

"Jeez, Lumpy, we thought you were conked out," Eddy said.

"Nah, I was awake the whole time," Ed replied. "So, Double D, you're saying that we're here on purpose?"

"...yes, Ed," Edd said, perturbed by Ed's sudden flash of insight and coherent speech.

"Huh, cool," Ed said, back to his old self.

"Anyway, think about where we found them. I found mine on my windowsill, Ed found his in his tub, and Eddy, you found yours on the street..."

"The street right outside my house actually," Eddy said slowly, now catching the drift.

"Exactly!" Edd exclaimed. "We were meant to find the orbs."

"Well, that only solves half of the puzzle, Sockhead," Eddy countered. "If we were meant to find the orbs, then who put 'em there?"

"That's what worries me, Eddy," Edd said, tapping his fingers together. "We've obviously been summoned here to fulfill some ulterior motive, but who knows just what motive that is? For all we know, we could have been transported here to facilitate the machinations of some scoundrel attempting to cause ruin across this world!"

"Or we could be summoned here to help it!" Ed chimed in.

"Maybe. Let's not dwell on this, gentlemen. We have a full day of training with Devon tomorrow and we need the rest." The skinny nerd sighed and reclined on his bed, closing his eyes.

* * *

Sarah, Jimmy, and Jonny (and Plank?) soon found that Bushburg resembled Peach Creek rather uncannily. The street layout was roughly the same and it even had a cul-de-sac that greatly resembled their own. However, all of the buildings were high up in the trees, made out of timber, branches, leaves, and vines.

"Nice place you got here," Jonny said in a complementary tone to Alvarez. "All the buildings look really sturdy for being made outta leaves and stuff."

"Thank you, Elemental boy. We pride ourselves on our architectural ability." The man smiled. "My father's grandfather was one of the first people to build upon this site. And my father is old by our race's standards."

"Your race?" Jimmy asked. The man along with all the other residents of Bushburg they had seen so far, all looked human.

Alvarez opened his mouth to answer, but another man of similar countenance ran up to him, out of breath.

"Forest Crawlers!" the man panted. "Attacking the garden! Hurry or they'll drain it dry!"

Alvarez cursed under his breath and looked forward, towards a large, misty dome in the distance. "Fifth damned time this month we've had to deal with these things! Come, children, and see the pride and joy of Bushburg, and those who protect it from hostile invaders."

He ran forward, the three hot on his heels.

When they reached the dome, they found it to be incredibly big, at least ten stories high and maybe a mile wide. Also, they found that the substance that the dome was made out of looked like glass or diamond, resembling hundreds of thousands of clear leaves sewn together into a dome.

"If you are Elementals, you should be able to help us," Alvarez said. He looked to the dome, which had no visible entrance.

"We vow our souls to nature, no matter the consequence," Alvarez said in the direction of the dome. Immediately, a small hole started to form in the crystals, the leaves falling down to the ground. Once it was big enough for them to go through, Alvarez went in, followed by Sarah, Jonny, then Jimmy.

All three of the kids stopped immediately when they stepped inside.

The place was beautiful. Plants of all colors shot from the ground going towards the top of the dome. It was wonderfully cool and misty, reflecting the colors of the rainbow everywhere.

"Oh... wow..." Jonny said, amazed.

Alvarez smiled. "Now you see why it is our pride and joy." He stuck his nose in to the air and sniffed. "They are this way," he said sharply, ponting to the like that, he ran off, blazing through the plants with lightning speed.

"Hold up, Mister Alvarez!" Jonny called as they ran after him.

They had no idea how Alvarez had gotten throught the plants so easily. There were so many and they were tightly compacted together, causing the kids to periodically get slapped in the face by a branch or trip over a root; the only way they could tell where to go was because of the sounds of fighting slowly coming closer.

The three burst through a wall of foliage, tumbling over each other. From on the ground, Jonny looked up to see what was happening.

It was chaos. Some of the beautiful plants were shriveled up gray stalks, and others looked like they had been in the process of wilting but it had abruptly stopped. All around, there were weird, green and white monsters, like giant nudibranches, slithering around, sucking all the water out of the plants.

"Eek!" Jimmy cowered behind Jonny. "What in Sam Hill are THOSE!?"

"Forest Crawlers," Alvarez growled. "Normally they're harmless, but every so often, they break into this garden and start absorbing water from the plants in here. It's a damned nuisance and the only way to stop them is kill them."

"What can we do to help?" Sarah said.

"We need to take them out immediately," Alvarez started. "Just allow me a short moment to change."

"Change?" Jonny started but stopped when he saw what was happening to the man. A burst of green energy erupted aroud the man, and when it cleared... he was something else. Now, he appeared to be part man, part wolf, with cinnamon colored fur and wickedly sharp claws and teeth.

He turned to the children. "Come," he said, his voice much deeper and wild sounding. With that he charged at the Forest Crawlers, claws first.

The trio just stood there, jaws glued squarely to the floor.

"D-Did he just..." Jimmy began.

"Yup," Jonny and Sarah said in unison.

"Wha-What should we do?" Jimmy asked.

Jonny put an ear to Plank. "...Plank says we should try using our powers!" he said.

"Jonny we don't know how to use them" Jimmy said "Last time we did it on an adrenaline rush"

"Well don't let that stop you," Jonny said. "Besides, for me this'll be my first time!"

Jonny breathed in. He tilted his head toward Plank. "What do you think I should do, buddy?" He tilted his ear toward the piece of wood, who remained silent except to Jonny. "That? Ya think so? Well, okay... you have a habit of not being wrong. "

Jonny looked at one of the crawlers, and he breathed in, then breathed out. In, out. In. Out. Focused. Calm. Controlled. Suddenly, a green aura blazed up around him and with a shout, Jonny punched the forest floor.

For a second, nothing happened. But then, the ground began to shake violently, causing all but Jonny to lose their balance. The roots of the many trees growing in the garden burst forth from the soil, and the crawler Jonny had his eyes on was crushed by the roots with a screech of surprise.

"Whoa. Nice one, Jonny," Sarah said.

Jonny blushed. "Not really. Plank and I thought it would kill more then just one."

"Not bad for a newbie," Alvarez called, smashing another Forest Crawler to pulp under is foot.

"I don't wanna get shown up" Sarah said aloud she focused and a red fireball formed in her hand

"Umm, Sarah... shooting fireballs doesn't seem like a good idea... with all this plant life around, you know?" Jimmy chimed.

Sarah frowned- he was right. Maybe she should try something different...

"Oh, I got it!" She focused the fire again, but instead of forming into a ball, it consumed her hand, curiously without burning it. Quickly, Sarah shaped it until it had the rough look of a boxing glove, then did the same to the other hand.

She smiled "This oughta do the trick." Sarah looked to the Crawler closest to her, judging the distances...

Suddenly, she jumped right at it, doing a somersault in the air before delivering a flaming punch right to the Crawler's back.

The creature recoiled in pain from Sarah's punch, but before it could hope to get away from the punch-happy redhead, she delivered another brutal punch, this time leaving a scorch mark shaped like a boxing glove on its back.

Sarah couldn't help but smirk. Years of beating up her brother were proving their worth. She decided to finish off the creature before it recovered, and she had a special idea for that.

She first transfered the fire from her left hand to her right hand, making its fire bigger, then shaped the fire until this time it was the shape of a huge gauntlet. Finally, her plan complete, Sarah brought her fist down upon the Crawler, and boy did it scream when it was crushed under her flaming fist.

"That was brutal, Sarah," Jimmy said after she killed the Crawler.

Sarah dissipated her fire and shook her hand to get off some of the Crawler ash. "Maybe, but hey, got the job done," she said casually.

Alvarez was horrified. "And you say you're a newborn Elemental? I haven't seen that level of skill in a child so young since I was fifteen!"

"Yeah, well ya haven't seen Jimmy use his powers yet." She looked to her meek little friend.

"C'mon Jimmy, your time to shine... Or shadow... Whatever it is you do."

Jimmy looked at the final Crawler, and bit his lip. What was he going to do?

Suddenly, the Crawler lunged at Alvarez. The slimy little creature clung to Alvarez's leg, and shot a tube-like thing into his knee. Before he could react, he screamed in pain as the creature began draining his bloodright from his veins.

"Alvarez!" Jimmy screamed. He had to do something. If those things could drain the trees so quickly, they could really do a number on the wolf man.

Suddenly Jimmy's shadow crawled up from the forest floor, and stood up, given form. It looked like Jimmy's outline filled in with black and given a three-dimensional form. At first, it appeared completely featureless, but it turned towards Jimmy, and with a thrill of horror, Jimmy saw that it had a pair of pure grey eyes with no iris, pupil, or sclera. It immediately lunged at the Crawler, which removed itself from Alverez and turned to Jimmy's shadow. It shot its draining tube out, but it passed through the shadow with the sound of rushing air, the sombral specter not reacting in the slightest. The shadow countered by shaping its arm into a blade, which it then used to slice the Crawler cleanly in two. It turned back to Jimmy and bowed, before dissipating back into being his shadow once more.

"...Jumping Jehoshaphat..." Jimmy whimpered, looking down in fear at his shadow.

"Jimmy..?" He turned to see Sarah, who for once in her life approached her best freind cautiously.

"By the Sainted Twelve..." They all looked and saw that Alvarez was slowly getting up, changing back to his human form. There was a wound in his knee that was round and roughly the size of a quarter. "That Elemental power was remarkable. And you say you have never been formally trained?!"

They all nodded their heads.

Alvarez looked down at the vivisected Crawler. "They never attack animal or human life," he said, nudging the Crawler with his toe. He shook his head. "This is not good. Something has commited the ultimate crime..."

"Ultimate crime?" Jonny asked.

Alvarez nodded grimly. "The crime that could spell the doom of our world. Something or someone has broken the laws of nature."

* * *

The Kankers looked around in confusion. They had covered their bodies when the skeletons went on the offensive, but the attack from the bony badniks never came. Slowly, each girl opened her eyes and looked around in turn, first May, then Marie, then Lee.

The skeletons lay copletely decimated. Their bodies were all broken and smashed to pieces, some so badly they were nothing but white powder.

"What the heck?" Lee said, looking at the shattered skeletal army. The damage looked like it had been done with some kind of large, blunt instument, perhaps a mallet of some kind.

"Yo, you three!" The Kankers turned to the source of the voice and saw a girl standing in the shadows. She looked about the same age as the sisters, was wearing a red, black and white sailor uniform, and had Japanese features. Her hair was pearly white and hung down in a long ponytail, and she had purple eyes. All of this contributed to a strange, disquieting appearance; however, her most striking trait was the huge scar that went in a line across her left cheek up to her left eye.

"Who the heck are you?" Lee asked.

The Japanese girl examined her fingernails and shrugged. "You pansies can call me Shin'ya. Shin'ya Banba."

"Pansies!?" Outrageous! Who was this girl, and why did she think she had the right to call them that!?

"Why, I oughta..." Lee started. However, before she could take a step toward Shin'ya, May grabbed her hand

"Lee, stop! She's armed!" May said urgently.

Lee looked to the girl's hands, and found her sibling was right.

The silver-haired girl had an enormous sledgehammer in her hand, caked with white bone dust.

So she was the one who killed the skeletons, Lee thought. This girl was clearly an experienced fighter. Not only did she take out every last one of the skeletons, but she did it with a weapon that looked too heavy for her to hold!

"When did you get here?" Marie asked, not wanting to ignite the girl's rage.

"Oh, I just woke up in this place," she said. "And boy, does it suuuuck. There are so many hallways and crap, I don't even know where the exit is."

That made Marie perk up. "Hmm... maybe we can help you out. I know a lot about castles, and I can say that we're pretty close to an exit."

"Really?" Shin'ya said. At Marie's nod, she grinned. "That's pretty badass. But, I'm lookin' for someone..."

"Who?" May piped in

"Well I guess you can call her... how ta put it..? My other half," Shin'ya concluded.

"Your sister, then," Lee said.

"No, no, nonono." Shin'ya shook her head and paced in a circle around the Kankers, dragging her sledgehammer behind her. "She's... my other self. A... split personality, I guess. Her name is Mahiru, and she's the face I wear in the daytime."

iOh, great. She's crazy,/i Lee thought. iOr she has that multiple personality thing or something./i

"Listen," Lee began slowly. "Let's just get going out of here." She looked to Marie. "Straight ahead, right?"

"Right." Marie nodded and exited the courtyard, gingerly stepping over bones.

Shin'ya yawned and stretched, then picked up her hammer. "It'll be good to get out of this hellhole."

The four girls walked forward through the dark halls. Idly, Shin'ya noticed that Lee was grabbing the waistband of her pants.

"Got a problem with your pants there?" she asked casually.

Lee grunted. "It's these damn balls."

"Balls?" Shin'ya giggled. "I don't think girls are supposed to have those."

"Not like that." Lee growled. She fished in her pocket and pulled out the yellow orb.

"Oooooh." Shin'ya looked at it curiously. "Pretty little thing. What does it do?"

"Well, I'm not really..." Lee was not able to finish. The ball disappeared in a flash of light, and when it had dissipated, the infinity symbol within was now on the back of Lee's right hand.

"...Sure," Lee concluded, suprised. What had happened to the ball?

Shin'ya suddenly screamed and ducked down, starting to sob. "L-Light! Make it go away!" she cried. All three Kankers jumped back, looking around this way and that before realizing that the scream had come from Shin'ya, who was now curled up on the floor, crying her eyes out.

"You okay?" May said to the crying girl.

"No! I'm scared shitless of light!" Shin'ya cried, tears running down her face.

"You're... afraid of light?" Marie said aloud.

The girl nodded and shook like a Jell-O. "I hate bright light! I can't stand it! It's awful!"

The Kankers looked at each other. This girl just kept getting stranger and stranger.

"Well, how do you go outside?" Lee asked.

"I don't!" Shin'ya wailed. "I only come out at night! Mahiru is the personality that's active during the daytime, but she isn't here!"

Lee groaned. The girl might be a good fighter, but she'd be a real hindrance because of her phobia. Maybe they could get her an umbrella or something, so they could travel during the day.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, calm down... it's not gonna hurt you. See? The light's gone," May soothed, puting a hand on Shin'ya's shoulder. "It's dark now, and we'll find Mahiru, don't you worry. Us girls gotta stick together."

The girl looked up, and she used her sleeve to dry her eyes. "Th-thanks..." she said as she got up, sniffling.

"Well, now that that's over..." Lee looked down the hall. "Let's go."

* * *

The next morning, the Eds were sitting at the counter in Al's tavern, munching on the breakfast Al had made them, which included thick fried sausage, fresh milk, fluffy hotcakes with sweet maple syrup, crispy hash browns, a pile of scrambled eggs, and finally an apple each to top it off. Currently, they were almost finished with their meals, content in the dawn-lit tavern of walnut brown wood and the smell of sweet cedar smoke.

"My, Al, I must say this is quite a lot of food," Edd commented, taking a bite from his last sausage.

Al shrugged. "It's good to eat well when you work hard."

The 'work' that Al was speaking of was, of course, their training with Devon. They had to cut their training session down by about an hour yesterday, due to Eddy's LJS attack. Today they at least hoped to get some actual training done.

Eddy gulped down the last bite of his apple and pitched the core into a wastebasket.

"Well I don't know about you guys, but I got my style set," Eddy boasted.

"Oh?" Edd asked. "What is that?"

"You'll see at training, but I will tell ya I got the idea from all the outcomes of our scams."

Edd raised his brow. Most of the outcomes of their scams resulted in beatings from the other kids in the cul-de-sac. What idea could he possibly get from that?

"You all better get going. Devon gets ticked when the people he wants to see are late," Al said as he picked up the boys plates.

"Righto, Al! C'mon, guys!" Ed said happily as he barreled out the door.

"We better go catch up to him," Edd said.

The two boys took off after the lummox, but were caught off when they heard a feminine scream.

"Did ya hear that?" Eddy said.

"Yes, it sounds like it's coming from the fields," Edd answered. He began biting his nails. "Do you suppose someone from the village is being attacked by something?!"

"Let's go find out." Eddy dragged Edd away in the direction of the voice.

They reached the fields and found that indeed, Edd's prediction was true. From what they could see there was a girl out in the fields. She was running as fast as she could from a small crowd of the spiders that had attacked Eddy only yesterday.

"Hey! Over here!" Eddy yelled to the girl, waving his arms. "This way!"

The girl turned in their direction but paused. Sighting the hesittation, one of the spiders lunged at the girl and tackled her with a shriek.

"Oh, crap! Double D, I'll be back in a sec- I gotta get her!" Eddy said hurriedly.

"Eddy, how? She's at least fifty yards out and-"

But in answer, Eddy dashed forward with unbelievable speed. The diminutive con artist reached the girl in under ten seconds, then kicked the spider away, sending it flying. He then scooped up the girl and ran back to Edd, the girl with a very supised expression on her face.

"Eddy, how did you do that!?" Edd said.

"Like I said, I got the idea from the outcomes of our scams. When they end up going kaput, I usually try and run away. But I'm not fast enough, so I decided to use the wind to push me and make me faster." Eddy shrugged. "Somethin' like that."

"I must admit, Eddy, that is a vey good idea," Edd said, impressed at his friend's idea. He crossed his arms and smiled approvingly.

"Umm... who are y-you two..?" the girl asked. Now that Edd could see her more clearly, he saw that her hair was silvery-white, tied back in a long ponytail, and her eyes were purple. She was wearing a black, white, and red outfit in the style of a Japanese school uniform. All this contributed to an interesting appearance, but her most startling feature was the thin but pronounced scar across her cheek and left eye.

"Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Edd Rubin, and this is my good friend Eddy McGee," Edd said pleasantly to the girl. Eddy set her down and bowed ostentatiously.

"Thank you for s-saving me..." the girl stuttered. "M-my name... m-my name's Mahiru Banba."

"Hmm. Your accent and name suggest Japanese ethnicity. Am I correct?" Edd asked.

She nodded her head timidly. "I'm from Maebashi, Gunma prefecture... are you two American? W-where am I?"

"Yes, Eddy and I are Americans, but this place is not America," Edd started. "From what I can tell, this is some sort of parallel universe where goats can talk and are considered a sapient species, and people can gain the power to manipulate elemental forces as they see fit."

"Huh?" Mahiru asked, obviously confused.

"Just ignore him, he's always talkin' science babble," Eddy said with a wave of the hand.

Just then, Crush walked up to the three in goat form. "What are you two doing?" he asked sternly. "Devon sent me out to find you when you did not arrive with Ed!"

"Oh, crud!" Eddy smacked himself in the forehead. "Sorry, Crush. We were busy saving this little lady-" He thumbed at Mahiru, who flinched a bit. "-from a pack of psychooooOOOOOOH HOLY SHIT!" His eyes went wide as he saw what happened next.

Suddenly, a large swarm of the horrid spiders burst forth from the fields. A few stayed, but most, to everyone's horror, made a mad dash towards the village.

"Oh, no! They're coming towards the village!" Edd said in horror.

"It would seem so. By the Sainted Twelve! Flesh Spiders are never this daring!" Crush growled. "Usually, they stick to the fields!"

The town was in a state of complete bedlam. People were scrambling left and right, running for cover. Mothers frantically searched for their children in the crowd. Wives and husbands tried to find their spouses. The village guards were preparing for battle.

"Eddy, come! We've got to find Ed!" Edd said frantically.

"What about Mahiru?" Eddy shot back. He looked to Mahiru, who was cowering in a fetal position.

"Shin'ya!" she screamed, sobbing. "Shin'ya, where are you!?"

Edd looked at Crush. "Can you try to get her to Al's tavern, Crush? She'll be safe there."

Crush nodded. "I can do much more than try!" He changed into a large bull, then looked to Mahiru. "Come, child, get on my back!"

Mahiru looked shocked at what the Highland Goat had just done. "Y-You're a..."

"No time for that, lass! Get on before those Flesh Spiders lacerate you!"

With that, Mahiru clambered on Crush, who took off toward Al's tavern the second the girl was settled.

"C'mon, Eddy! We need to get Ed!"

The two ran toward the doctor's office, zigzagging through the streets and dodging spiders as they cut through the crowds.

"I'm gonna speed myself there so I can help out. Think you'll be okay?" Eddy asked.

"I doubt it!" Edd ducked to avoid a Flesh Spider flying over his head.

"Well can't you do some Entropy shit!?"

"Eddy, really?! You're cursing at a time like this!" Edd cried.

"This seems like the best time to do it Sockhead!" Eddy retorted as he sidestepped to avoid a spider.

They finally reached the doctor's office, and what they found was incredible. Just outside the door, Ed was a few feet off the ground, his eyes glowing teal and shooting teal lightning from his hands.

"Well, it seems Ed found his style," Edd said, looking at his friend with a mix of fascination and abject terror.

"Yeah, the pissed-off lightning god style," Eddy said in a deadpan. He put his hands behind his head and watched his lovable lump of a comrade cold-bloodedly disintegrate several spiders.

Edd and Eddy both ran to their friend who, upon seeing them, simply said, "Go inside! Devon needs help!" His voice sounded the same, but when he spoke there was an air of cunning and calculation to it.

They ran in on Ed's command, and found the office in shambles. The floor was littered with broken wood and glass, and medical implements were scattered everywhere, except for things like scalpels and syringes, which were sticking out of the corpses of some spiders.

"Devon!" Edd called out. He walked further inward, slowly stepping over broken boards and chairs. "Devon, are you here?"

"Devon!?" Eddy added. He began looking around the house, trying to see if Devon was squirrelled away in some hiding place or another. "Devon, where are you? Ed's turned into &amp;!%#in' Thor out there!"

Suddenly, one of the doors burst open, an injured-looking spider appearing in the doorway. It was about to turn and run, but almost immediately, something long and sharp, shining cruelly in the midmorning sunlight, flew through the door and impaled it against the wall. The Flesh Spider let out a low, agonized croak, and went still. Devon stepped into the room, looking grim.

"I was hoping that I would never have to take another life," he said darkly, grabbing the thing that had killed the spider and yanking it out of the wall, the spider's carcass falling to the ground. Now that it wasn't flying through the air, Edd and Eddy could see that the killing tool was an elegant rapier crafted out of nothing but clear ice. The old doctor sighed and tightened his grip on the sword, making it melt and fall to the ground as water.

Edd and Eddy looked in amazement at what the old doctor had done. Now, they had no doubts that the man was the best for their Elemental training.

"Devon, are you okay?" Edd asked the man nervously.

"No, not really. I hate to fight, but alas, it seems I have no choice... I must help my people," Devon responded.

He bent down to the water on the floor and held out his hand immediately the water sprang up into Devon's hand and reformed the rapier. "How are Ed and Crush?" he asked.

"Ed's outside the office blasting lightning like friggin' Zeus, and Crush is at Al's tavern, I think," Eddy told him.

"Good" Devon said "Come with me. We will try and make our way toward Al, but first..."

He disappeared through the door he had killed the Flesh Spider through, then came back carrying a trunk. He set it down and pulled out three items: a bow, a short sword and a broadsword.

"Eddy, take the bow. Edd, use the short sword. I will give Ed the broadsword."

Eddy grabbed the bow and quiver of arrows with it. He slung the quiver over his back, took out a arrow, and nocked it.

Edd picked up the short sword. He found that it fit suprisingly well in his hand- not too heavy, not too light, very nice.

"Come," Devon beckoned. As he walked out the door, he looked up at Ed, who was finished with killing spiders. "Ed, catch!" he called as he threw the sword to the lunkhead. Ed caught it and positioned it in his two hands, staring at it with awe. As a longtime fan of sci-fi and fantasy, owning his own sword was a long time dream of his. Now, not only did he have one, but he was going to get to use it!

Devon started cutting his way through the spiders with ease. Each stroke made contact like a kiss of death and chopped one of the spiders into pieces. One foolish spider jumped right in front of him, Devon merely swung the sword horizontally, slashing it in half.

"Wow..." Eddy grinned.

The Eds followed behind Devon. As a spider approached, Eddy aimed his bow and fired off an arrow, and to Eddy's suprise, it actually hit the spider sqare in the head.

"Huh. Maybe I can get used to this thing."

They finally made it to the Tavern and found it in chaos. Most of the windows were broken out, the door was kicked inward, and from what they could tell from the noise inside there was a fight going on.

"C'mon! We gotta get in there," Eddy shouted as he charged to the door, arrow drawn. Devon suddenly grabbed his shoulder, drawing him back.

"No! We cannot go through the front door. That's where most of the spiders will be. We need to sneak through the back door and offer ourselves a modicum of safety."

Devon trotted to the alley and motioned the Eds to follow. They followed him, yes, but not before Edd caught a look inside through the window. The noises that they were hearing inside did, in fact, signify a fight. Most of the taverngoers were battling spiders, attacking them with whatever was handy- clubs, beer mugs, even entire tables. Al and Crush were in front of the bar, fending off Flesh Spiders while Mahiru cowered behind a barstool.

"Boys, come on, I've found the back door." Devon opened the back door, and ushered the Eds in.

When the boys stepped in a loud voice greeted them.

"Where have you all been!?" Al called. he was holding a wooden axe in his two hands and was hacking away at the spiders with it. "I don't want my reputation to be tarnished because I lost some customers to these goddamn Flesh Spiders!"

"Easy, Al," Devon said coolly, melting his blade into water and shooting it at one of the spiders, encasing it in a water sphere that drowned it.

Ed immediately lit his eyes up and began moving at the spiders, sword raised.

"Prepare to face the wrath of Ed, Elemental of Aether!" Ed shouted at the Flesh Spiders.

Ed swung his sword like a baseball bat in a long arc at a cluster of spiders, which only cut a few of them, but the rest were knocked away by the force of the blow, stunned.

"Uh, yeah, face the wrath of Eddy, Elemental of Air, or something like that," Eddy echoed, nowhere near as enthusiastic as Ed.

The short head honcho of the Eds nocked a few arrows, and as he aimed, he got an idea. Instead of aiming right at the spiders, he aimed a few feet away from them and fired. The arrows soared right by the spiders. Thinking Eddy had missed, the huge things hissed and leapt at him, but right before the arrows hit the wall, Eddy made a pulling motion with his free hand. The wind around the arrows whipped them about, turning them around and changing their direction. They hit the spiders square in the back, and the vile arachnids screamed in pain as they sunk to the floor.

Edd gulped. He'd never used a sword before, and had no skil in swordfighting. How was he going to...

Before he could think it out, he heard Crush bellow in pain. A rather large spider had tackled the Highland Goat and bit into his hide, the wound gushing out blood.

"Crush!" Edd cried out. In a moment of adrenaline mixed with sheer kamikaze spirit, Edd tossed himself at the spider, sword first. "You'll pay for that, you malefactious arachniiiid!" he screamed. The spider reared up on its hind legs in surprise, before Edd drove the sword right through its head, causing green ooze to spray out. The spider's legs twitched, and it fell over on its back, dead.

Edd stared at what he had just done. He had taken the life of an actual living thing.

"My lord," Edd said quietly. What would his spiders at home think of him for doing this?

Crush slowly stood up his legs wobbly. "Thank you, child. Luckily, it did not have time to inject its venom into me," he said to the scrawny Ed.

"Oh... uhm... you're welcome, I suppose," Edd said.

"I know what you're feeling right now," Crush said, guessing the source of Edd's nerves. "I felt horrid after taking my first life. But trust in me, Edd: sometimes you have to take a life to save your own and the lives of those important to you."

Edd stood up straighter, and nodded. Crush was right; had he not killed that spider Crush would have died.

Mahiru slowly crawled out from behind the bar. "I... I'm sorry to interrupt, but... I just saw a really big s-spider outside..."

Edd looked to the girl. "Well all of these spiders are of considerable size," he started.

"I mean even bigger than these spiders!" she whispered urgently.

That made Edd's eyes widen. "What do you mean by bigger? How big?"

He was answered when the doors to the tavern, once again closed by some wayward fighter, burst inward, and what had done the deed was by far the largest of all the spiders. The horrible thing was the size of a minivan and its fangs were the legnth of Ed's arm, dripping black venom.

"THAT BIG!" Mahiru shrieked as she scuttled back behind the bar counter.

"HOLY- How in the #$%! can they possibly be that big?!" Eddy yelled, horrified.

Devon grabbed his sword, muttering an oath. "Crush, can you turn in to anything to contend to that!?" shouted he.

Crush tried to change, but winced and fell to his knees. "I'm sorry. I'm in too much pain to change..." he sighed.

Ed was the first to take action against the slowly advancing Flesh Spider. He welled up a ball of lightning in his hands and fired it outward, shooting it in a straight line. It hit the spider, but instead of reacting with a squeal of agony at the lightning bolt, it merely looked angered.

"Umm... I don't think it likes lightning," Ed said as he gripped his sword. Suddenly, an idea struck him. He called forth the lightning again, willing it to manifest, but instead of directing it to his hands, he urged it to gather in his sword. The air crackled with a burning smell, and suddenly, teal lightning danced along Ed's blade.

"Aw yeah! Let's mambo! Ei, ei, ou!" Ed hollered. He charged at the spider, his sword raised, and when he was in range of the spider he swung at it. Steel met flesh, and instantly, electricity arced from the blade onto the spider. The enormous arachnid cried as the electricity ran through it, and suddenly, the spider shouted and exploded into ash, leaving behind a horrible smell and a pile of some silver coins.

"Cool." Ed grinned stupidly and picked up the coins, jingling them in his hand. However, his smile was short-lived, as another spider blindsided him, knocking him to the ground and sinking its fangs in deep enough to inject its wicked venom.

"ED!" Eddy and Edd shouted, terror overloading them. Their friend, their best friend, was poisoned.

Edd felt some energy flow through he looked down and saw his hands were aglow with pink light. In a moment of sheer fury and fear, he shot the energy at the ceiling above the spider. Suddenly, the fragment that the light bolt had impacted turned black and metallic looking and broke away from the rest of the ceiling. It fell on top of the spider, crushing it flat.

With the spider taken care of, the two Eds ran towards their dear pal. He was writhing on the ground, clutching his arm where the spider had bit him. Already, he was looking pallid and sickly. His sclera were turning yellow, and his lips were black.

"Guys... I can't breathe..." he moaned.

"What do we do, what do we do!?" Eddy panicked.

"A-Al, Devon!" Edd yelled. "Do you have an antivenom here or something?!"

"There should be some around here. All the buildings in Castelia are supposed to have some"." Al frowned. "But there hasn't been a Flesh Spider invasion here for years..."

Meanwhile, Mahiru, who was still hiding behind the bar counter, was on her hands and knees, praying to God that she wouldn't be found by a surviving Flesh Spider. She looked to her right, and saw, in a cabinet under the counter, a large glass bottle labeled "Flesh Spider Antivenom". Her eyes lit up, and she snatched the bottle up.

"H... h-here!" she stammered, bolting upright and holding up the bottle. "I f-found it!"

Al grabbed the bottle from the girl and handed it off to Devon "Here Devon. You know how to give this stuff," he said. He looked to the girl and nodded. "Nice job, lass. You may have just saved Ed's life."

"Thank goodness," she said meekly.

Devon called the fluid out of the bottle. "Ed, you need to move your hand. The antivenom has to be applied at the wound" Devon instructed.

Ed made a weak rasping noise and tried to move his arm. It took tremendous effort, but Ed was able to slowly move his arm enough for Eddy to roll up the sleeve of his windbreaker, exposing the gaping puncture wound.

After Devon could see the wound, he nodded, and he sent the fluid right into the wound. Ed winced- the antivenom was cold and stung bitterly when it entered his body. Slowly, Ed felt his breath slowly return. His skin turned back to its natural(?) jaundice, and his eyes and lips changed back as well. After a few minutes, he looked like his regular self again.

"Ed, are you okay?" Edd and Eddy asked in tandem.

"Ohh... why does my mouth taste salty?" Ed groaned, holding out his tongue.

Devon laughed. "All is right with him. People say they get a salty taste in their mouths after taking the antivenom."

Eddy let out a sigh of relief. "That's our Lumpy! Not even getting bit by a spider the size of a dog can kill him."

Ed looked at the silver coins in his hand. "Devon, what are these?" he asked, showing them to the elder Elemental.

"Spoils of your battle," Devon chuckled. "A lot of monsters like those ghastly Flesh Spiders have a habit of eating treasures and money. When they die, they might drop electrum coins like what you have there."

"Wait a mo! You're saying for killing them, we get paid!" Eddy exclaimed.

"Well, metaphorically speaking, yes," Devon said.

"C'mon, Lumpy. We got some cleaning up to do!" Eddy said with dollar signs in his eyes.

"Coming Eddy!" Ed said, either oblivious to the fact that he had almost died, or choosing to ignore it. He lifted himself up off the floor, and the two left, eagerly chattering about killing more spiders and looting their carcasses.

Edd rolled his eyes. "Well, it's good to see he is back to his normal self," he chuckled.

"I agree..." Mahiru walked up to Edd, who for the first time noticed that there was a lump in her skirt pocket.

"Mahiru, what is that?" He asked, pointing at the lump.

Mahiru looked at he pocket. "Oh... I'd f-forgotten about t-this." She fished in her pocket... and pulled out an Elemental Orb. Like the one Jimmy possessed, this one was jet black and had a bat wing insignia within.

"Well!" Devon started "Another Elemental- a Darkness Elemental at that."

"Darkness?" Eddy side-eyed Mahiru, who squeaked at the suspicious look and flinched.

"Darkness..." She repeated. "Heh... Shin'ya might like that..."

"Who is this Shin'ya?" Edd asked.

"Oh-! Um, she's my, uhhh..." the girl gulped, fidgeting with the ball a bit.

"She's- she's my, umm... other self."

"Other self?" Edd asked. What did she mean?

"You know-" Mahiru gestured helplessly to herself. "My... other personality," Mahiru finished.

"Other personality?" Edd said, suprised. This girl was saying that she had another personality, but from what Edd had read on dissociative identity disorder, people sometimes changed when under stress. So far, Mahiru showed no signs of changing personalities at all.

"B-but... she's... sh-she's not with me... she's somewhere else."

"Not here? What do you mean?" Edd asked.

Mahiru opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly her hand became absorbed in darkness. When the dark miasma cleared, the bat wing symbol was now on the back of her right hand.

"Oh! I believe the girl just awakened," Devon said.

There was an awkward silence.

* * *

"Finally, the frickin' door!" Lee Kanker shouted. After walking for several more hours, getting lost again on the way, they had finally reached the front door of the castle, Marie being the castle expert said that the design of the door looked Persian rather then French. All that got her was a glare from Lee, who was irritated enough of hearing her talk throughout the whole time they were there. Marie had talked so much that at one point Lee tried to see if the remaining two orbs would do something to block out the sound. They didn't do anything of the sort: one just felt heavy and the other stank.

"Well, now that we're here, let's go! This place gives me the creeps," May said.

Just when Lee was about to touch the handle of the door, though, Shin'ya's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

"Wait!" the white-haired girl snapped as she pulled Lee's wrist back.

"What's the big idea!?" Lee grunted angrily, taking her wrist out of Shin'ya's hand.

"Skeletons. More of them. I hear ther bones rattling behind the door." Shin'ya cocked her head, listening intently to what sounds were on the other side of the door. "Sounds like there's loads of 'em."

Lee paled. "You sure?" She said, sotto voce.

"Yep." Shin'ya frowned. "Probably even more than the last batch. I can't swing my hammer around for long periods of time- those nasty ol' bags of bones would suffocate me before I got the chance to smash 'em all up."

"Dammit. What do we do?" Lee asked.

Shin'ya shook her head. "No clue, I'm not even sure we'll be able to get out."

However, Marie was listening in on the conversation, and she noticed the stinking, purple ball that she'd found. It had the icon of a stylized skull in it, so maybe...

"Gimme that!" Quick as a wink, she snatched the ball up from Lee and held it tight.

The ball suddenly faded in to a mist and enveloped her right hand. After the mist faded, the symbol had migrated to Marie's hand, and she grinned, flexing her fingers.

"Hey! That's what happened to Lee's ball, y'know, except with light," May said.

Suddenly, the door lurched with weight.

"Gah! Shit, they heard us!" Shin'ya barked, readying her hammer. "Get back!"

But Marie stepped forward, and opened the door calmly.

The pack of skeletons lurched forward, but as soon as they saw the mark on Marie's right hand, instead of attacking, the skeltons stood there, not even attempting to move.

Shin'ya blinked "What did you do?" She whispered to the blue haired girl.

"Can it and let me talk." Marie cackled, an unearthly miasma of dark energy spreading around her body. "Listen up, ya pile of femurs!" she yelled. The skeletons tilted their heads to the side as one. "First of all, you really piss me off! Attacking me and my sisters and crazy girl back there like that. Damn jerks."

Marie licked her lips. "Now, I know you boneheads have been here a while." She smirked devilishly, hands behind her back. "Seems like yer all pretty ticked off. Why is that, exactly?"

The skeletons looked down, upset. One motioned to its ribcage and mimed the action of smashing into it with a sledgehammer, then shook its head no.

"Okay, admittably I can sympathize for having my chest smashed in with a hammer. But that does NOT make up for trying to kill us." Marie's smirk turned into a full-blown psychotic smile. "So I am going to have you..." She paused, looking for the word. "Entertain us."

If it was even possible, her smile turned bigger. "Now..." She raised her hands into the air. "Dance for me, my puppets!" Marie laughed. manaically.

Suddenly the skeletons rattled and started to do a kind of dance that could only be described as absolutely bizarre. They were clanking their limbs together and waving their arms into the air, bones wobbling this way and that like they were made of rubber.

Lee raised a brow behind her hair "Did you know they'd do that?" She asked her sibling.

"Well I knew they would dance... buuuuuut, I didn't know what kind of dance," Marie responded. "The real reason I did it was to get to that exit," she said, pointing over to the double door on the other side of the large ballroom.

"Oh." Lee said.

The group of girls began quietly weaving through the crowd of skeletons, doing their absolute best not to bump into the dancing undead. Finally, they reached the large door Lee gently pushed the door making it give a loud creak. The girls winced and looked behind them- thankfully, the skeletons were still dancing. "C'mon. They're stuck dancing. Let's just go!" May said urgently. Lee nodded and pushed open the door the rest of the way, revealing the moon shining up in the sky. With that, the girls walked out, Marie being the last to go. After one quick, satisfied glance at the skeletons, she shut the door slowly and quietly.

When they got out of the castle, May sighed in relief, turning to face the castle with her sisters and Shin'ya. "Thank God we made it out!"

"I'll say!" Lee grimaced. "I never wanna take biology class ever again!"

"Hello there," A formal-sounding tenor voice said.

All four girls whipped around and saw two young men. Both were dressed in what looked like stereotypical bellhops' uniforms, with black hats and black and red suits with gold trimmings and buttons. They had an unearthly appearance- their skin was white like ivory, their hair black as raven feathers, and their eyes... their eyes were bright red, redder than anything any of the girls had ever seen before.

"Who the hell are you?" Shin'ya growled, tightening her grip on her hammer. "You here to perv out on us?!"

Both looked startled "Oh-! Do pardon me for not introducing myself. My name is Carvan," the one who had spoken said with a bow. "And my partner," he said, motioning to the man beside him, who was taller and broader than the other and wore glasses, "is Maltan." He nodded his head

"A pleasure to meet you all," Maltan said in a soft baritone. He bowed as well.

"Whaddaya want? You here to introduce us to some escort service?" Lee asked snidely.

"Well in a way, yes," Carvan said.

The girls blinked.

"We are servants to our queen, Saint Maylis, and we have been sent here to retrieve you," Maltan explained.

"Retrieve?" Marie asked. This was getting very odd very quickly, and none of the Kankers nor Shin'ya liked this situation very much at all.

"Yes," Carvan said "We do hope you did not encounter any trouble..."

"We were almost killed by freaking skeletons, you drip! What does that sound like to you?!" Lee barked at the two men.

The two men looked at each other, concerned. "Oh, we're terribly sorry for that. The skeletons are usually docile and love dancing."

That gave Marie a jolt and a half. All they wanted to do is dance? Had she somehow... helped the skeletons?

"Well, why should we trust you all anyway?!" Lee snapped.

Carvan shrugged. "I admit, it might seem hard to trust us vampires..."

"VAMPIRE!?" all the girls shouted at once.

Maltan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with annoyance, eyes closed. "I told you we should have told them that first, Carvan."

"I'm gonna kill you, ya damn bloodsuckers!" Shinya came rushing at them, her sledgehammer at the ready.

"Don't worry! We fed before coming!" Carvan said quickly. Maltan facepalmed at his cohort's remark.

With that, Shin'ya lunged, swinging her hammer at Carvan. Luckily, the vampire was inhumanly fast and managed to dodge the swings from the girl.

Maltan sighed, shaking his head and putting a hand to his temple as his partner ducked and weaved under and around Shin'ya's wild blows. "Maylis told us that they still beleive our kind drink blood!" he groaned.

"It slipped my mind!" Carvan said as he dodged an attack that most certainly would have crushed his head.

"Uh, 'scuse me," Marie said to Maltan, who looked to the blue-haired girl. "Did you say that you don't drink blood?" she asked.

"No; in fact, we found a substitute for it, thanks to Saint Maylis. Those of our kind who drink blood are seen as outlaws," Maltan said, as a wall crumbled behind him from Shin'ya's blow. Speaking of Shin'ya, she had stopped in her tracks when she heard the truth, with Carvan pinned down to the ground under her foot.

Okay, so they didn't drink blood, which meant they had no desire to feed on the Kankers and Shin'ya. So, why did the vampires want them?

"Maylis said if all else fails, to just tell you the truth," Maltan started. "Our queen requires your presence in her royal court, as she has a mission for you."

"What are you saying?" Lee asked.

"To put it frankly, our queen sent you to this world to do this mission," Maltan stated.

"Indeed." Carvan nodded. "What this mission is, we know not, but it must be important if Queen Maylis requires people from another world to carry it out."

The Kankers looked at each other. All were thinking the same thing: this Maylis person brought them here, so maybe she could put them back. Looking to Shin'ya, they knew she was thinking the same thing from where she was, her hammer now pinning Carvan on the ground instead of her foot.

"Okay, we'll come with you to your queen or whatever, but how do we get there?" the Japanese girl growled, warily letting go.

"Oh, that's easy," Carvan said, almost immediately up on his feet.

He put his fingers to his lips and blew, creating an eerie sounding whistle. In response, there was a deep, menacing roar, like something right out of Jurassic Park. Something then flew over the hill and landed a few feet from the girls, making their mouths drop.

A chariot made out of dark wood and stone was being pulled by what looked like a dragon about the size of a plow horse. It was covered in shiny black scales, its teeth short, white, and very sharp looking. Its head was adorned with two black horns shaped like crescent moons, and its eyes were sharp red slits.

"What the %$#!?" Marie swore.

Carvan smiled to himself. "Heh, I always love people's reactions when they first see a wyvern."

Maltan shot a frustrated look at his partner, who shrugged playfully at the glare. The more mature vampire then turned to the girls.

"Do not worry yourselves about the wyvern. It will not hurt you; it is trained not to bite," Maltan assured the quartet.

Warily, the girls climbed on the chariot, taking the backmost seats. Carvan followed, then Maltan, who grabbed the reins and snapped them with a sharp "YAAH!" The wyvern flapped its wings once, which shot them off the ground, then flapped again, which sent them rocketing to the east, towards the rising sun.

* * *

Author's Notes

Prince: Oooh, so the plot thickens.

Kit: That it does. And we have a new addition to the series, in the form of the other property rearing its head: Akuma no Riddle!

Prince: Or Riddle Story of Devil for those who don't know the Japanese name.

Kit: Anyway, things are shaping up to get pretty suspenseful, no? I can confirm that we are going to include all of the thirteen main characters of Akuma no Riddle, if anyone was nervous about that. You'll see Tokaku, Haru, Isuke, Nio, Haruki, and everyone else!

Prince: Yep, trust me we have a heck of a lot planned.

Kit: Ayup! Well, that's it for now, everyone. Toodle-loo! Have a good one! B^)

* * *

Additional Author's Note from Kit:

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Winter Holiday Season in General!

Sorry about the long wait- I've been dealing with school stress and depression.

Anyway, I managed to finish proofreading this chapter just in time for my dear friend and collaborateur Prince's birthday! Happy birthday, Prince! Love ya, man!

Thank you for reading, everyone! It's awesome to hear your feedback.


	7. Answers

An Elemental Edventure

by Kit Lupin and PrinceOfLife

Chapter 7: Answers

"Guess who's rich!" Eddy boasted as he walked back into the destroyed tavern. The town was in shambles and a lot of people were complaining of the same salty taste that Ed had, but nobody was severely hurt by the Flesh Spider attack. In light of this and with their new powers and weaponry, Eddy and Ed had gone out hunting for spiders to kill and recover money from.

"Guess who's been cleaning up while you were gone?" Edd said, a bit annoyed. Edd and Mahiru had stayed behind to clean up the tavern, moving broken planks of wood and decimated tables and chairs outside to a wood burning pile, which was thankfully easy thanks to the giant hole created by the spider bursting through the doors.

"Take a chill pill, Sockhead," Eddy said, waving his hand dimissively. He looked up to the dark lump that had killed the spider which bit Ed.

"The heck is that anyway?" he asked, pointing at it.

"A three-by-three block of pure iron," Edd said while wiping some sweat off his forehead.

"Iron! How'd you manage that?" Eddy said, examining the iron block.

"Devon said I did something to the molecular structure of the wood and totally changed it into iron. Essentially, I performed alchemy."

Before Eddy could ask what alchemy was, Ed barged in, his new sword slung in a sheath over his shoulder.

"Boy-oh-boy Double D! You shoulda come with us when we went spider hunting! It was really fun! And me and Eddy got a lot of money and stuff from it!" Ed pulled a fistful of bloodstained gold out of his pocket and showed Edd.

The nerd blanched at the blood. "Th-that's very nice, Ed," he said shakily. "Um, w-why don't you show Mahiru?"

"Okey-Dokey Double D!" Ed said. He was about to take off when he stopped and looked to the skinny Ed. "Um, where is she?"

"She went upstairs to sweep," replied Edd.

"Thanks!" Ed said as he bounded upstairs.

Eddy looked at Edd, shaking his head. "Y'know, I get the feeling that your fear of blood might be a bit of a setback," the scam artist said.

"Well, I'm sorry Eddy but you know that I am hemophobic," Edd said. He looked back to the iron block and grimaced.

"Can you help me move that? Mahiru and I tried for two hours to no avail." Edd rubbed the back of his head, knocking a few blond hairs loose from his hat.

"Yeah, whatever," Eddy said as the two walked to the block. They bent down and after getting their hands under it, began trying to lift it, grunting and sweating profusely in the process.

"Yknow what? I got an idea," Eddy stated after about five minutes of this unsuccessful nonsense. "Let's try and lift the block like an inch, and then I'll just move it with the wind."

"Sounds plausible in theory," Edd considered. "Let's give it a try." With that, the boys grunted loudly once more, attempting to hoist the block up. Finally, Edd felt it lift.

"Now, Eddy!" Edd barked. It felt like his arms were about to break off!

With a cry, Eddy made the breeze envelop the block, and it slowly started to lift up... before falling back down on their toes.

"EEEEEEYOWWWWWWW!" Edd and Eddy screamed in sheer agony.

Ed barreled down the steps followed by Mahiru.

"Guys, is something wrong!?" Ed asked, brow creased in worry.

"THIS MOTHER%&amp;$#ING BLOCK OF IRON CRUSHED OUR FEET!" Eddy screeched, holding his foot and hopping this way and that. He was cussing a blue streak.

Instead of berating Eddy for swearing, Edd nodded in ageement, his mouth clamped firmly shut so as not to let any untoward words escape.

"Oh! You two shoulda told me you were going to lift it," replied Ed, a smile reappearing on his face. Casually, the yellow-skinned lunk walked up to the iron, cracked his knuckles, bent over, and with a small huff, lifted it off the ground, easy as you please.

Mahiru watched with her jaw unhinged as Ed carried the iron outside.

"Has h-he always been able to d-do that?" she asked.

"Yes," Edd and Eddy deadpanned.

Crush suddenly stumbled in. looking flustered. He was in his goat form and gauze was covering the spot where the spider had bit him. "You all might want to come with me!" he said urgently.

"What's the problem, Crush?" Edd asked, concerned.

"Two messengers just arrived, looking for the four of you! Where is Ed!?"

"Right here, Crush!" Ed came back in, having disposed of the iron brick.

"Good! Come along, we must hurry!" Crush ran out, the four kids trailing after him.

"So how do you know that they want us!?" Eddy asked as they ran.

"Well, when you ask for Elementals of Entropy, Air, Aether, and Darkness in this area, in most cases you would be considered rather unhinged, but given the situation..." Crush said.

Eddy nodded, now knowing where the Highland Goat was coming from.

They soon reached a tall, vaguely Victorian building of white stone that must have been town hall. It was relatively untouched by the Flesh Spider attack, save for a few windows. Most of the townsfolk were gathered outside of it, murmuring to each other.

"First that eagle, then the Flesh Spiders, now this! What's going on around here?" Edd heard one housewife say to another as the group approached.

As the motley pack weaved their way through the crowd, Mahiru noticed that what looked like a dragon hooked up to a chariot was in front of the building. It looked at her mildly with its piercing red eyes, making the girl squeak and turn away.

They were soon at the steps of the building, where Al and Devon were standing at the door.

"Ed, Edd, Eddy, Mahiru? Misters Delkaz and Berloz are waiting inside," Devon said.

The group walked in, sans Crush, who stayed outside. The kids looked into the main lobby, and found two pale, dark-haired men in fancy clothes, sitting in some plush chairs. Were they with the Kankers the night before, the Eds and Mahiru would know that these men were not men but vampires

"Hello, children," one of the men said standing up. He was chubby, had a small mustache, and short, swept-over hair. He gave a small bow. " My name is Delkaz."

He looked to his companion who was now standing as well. The other messenger was rail thin and had hair that reached the nape of his neck. "And I am Berloz," the thinner one said, then bowed, mimicking his partner.

"We were sent here by Queen Maylis," both said in tandem.

"Maylis?" Edd said. He cupped his chin- didn't Al say something about her? Something about her species...

"A queen?" Eddy's eyes lit up. "What's she like? Is she rolling in diamonds and gold and jewels all over the place?"

"Actually, Maylis prefers not to be in the presence of diamonds and gold. She finds it overly decadent," Delkaz said.

Eddy scowled.

"E-excuse me, but... why does she want us?" Mahiru finally spoke up, quavering in the presence of these strange men.

"She asked for your presence because..." Before Berloz could finish his sentence, Edd spoke up.

"Vampires! Al said Maylis was their queen!" Edd blurted out.

The group promptly all took a swift step back.

"Vampires!?" Mahiru shrieked.

"Vampires!?" Eddy gulped.

"Vampires!" Ed grinned widely. "That's so cool!" He immediately got in Berloz's face. "Suck my blood, vile legions of the undead!"

The dapper vampire grimaced at the last statement. "Erm.. I'm dearly sorry, yellow one, but we do not drink blood."

"Aww," Ed said with a frown on his face. Besides getting a sword, another one of his dreams was being a vampire or other such movie monster.

"You don't drink blood?" Edd asked, eyebrow raised. "Then what _do _you drink?"

Delkaz produced a small satchel from behind himself. He reached in, and pulled out something the size of a fist that was brown and had fibers sticking out of it.

Upon seeing it, every human in the room blinked, mouths hanging open.

"A... _coconut_?" Mahiru asked.

"A coconut." Delkaz suddenly pierced one of the coconut's holes with a fang and started noisily slurping at the coconut's milk.

"It was a discovery made by Queen Maylis after the war with Void that coconut milk works as a better substitute for blood. It staves off our hunger longer," Berloz explained as his friend drank.

"Huh," Edd said. Odd biology they had if a substitute for blood can be coconut milk. Then again, he knew that coconut water could be used in an emergency blood transfusion, so...

The nerdy Ed sighed and made a mental note to find a notebook to write this kind of thing down in.

"Now that we know you _aren't_ going to rip off our faces," Eddy started, "what do you want with us?"

Delkaz finished his drink and wiped off some excess coconut milk from his mustache. "Queen Maylis wants to see you all. She said she was the one who brought you all here," the vampire said.

"What?!" the four of them said in tandem.

"Indeed," Berloz said. "Why, we don't know, but she's the one who wanted you."

The group looked to one another. Why would a queen want them so badly that she would rip them from their homes? Each of them had a different expression on their faces. Ed was biting his lip, looking to the side. Edd's brow was furrowed, and he was cupping his chin with his left hand. Eddy was frowning, his fingers clasped together. Mahiru was just staring, wide-eyed.

"We understand that you must be horribly confused," Berloz saaid, "but Maylis said she would explain everything once we arrived with you and the others brought here."

Others. That got Eddy thinking.

"Eh..." Eddy put a hand to his chin. "Say, how many others are we talkin' here?"

"Uhm..." Delkaz pinched the bridge of his nose. "How many did Maylis say again?" he said to Berloz.

"Erm..." Berloz began counting on his fingers. "Twelve from one country, fourteen from another... twenty-six in all."

"Twenty-six!" Edd's jaw dropped. "And what do you mean by country?"

"Two countries of your world. Maylis referred to them as Japan? And America? Do you know them?" Berloz elaborated.

The Eds turned to Mahiru, who was still wide-eyed. It explained Mahiru's appearance well enough- she must have been taken from Japan- but this still left one question.

"Uhm, excuse me," Edd started. "What are the names of the ones from America?" he asked.

Delkaz frowned " Sadly, we were not told those. We were only given your names. The other messenger teams were given the names of the people who they were assigned to collect, and no one else.":

Edd licked his lips, then bit his lower one. Could they really trust these men?

Berloz then spoke up. "If you wish, the queen said you can bring along companions if you are in association with anyone." Edd pondered on this. Crush would probably be invaluable, and maybe Devon or Al. Then again, they both ran important institutions in Castelia, so it would be unwise to bring the two along.

As Edd dithered, Eddy was the one to break the silence this time. "Listen. We're all confused as hell about this. We've been taken from our beds, attacked by spiders, Edd here," he said, pointing his thumb at the skinny Ed, "rode into town on the back of a shapeshifting goat, and we met a girl who says she's actually supposed to have another personality... uh, no offense, Mahiru."

"N... none taken," Mahiru blurted.

"And then you all suddenly come along, saying that you can bring us to the person who brought us here." Eddy paused to collect his thoughts, then shrugged. "It sounds like something out of a frickin' video game. But, needless to say, we don't have any other leads or anything, sooooo... yeah. I'm in."

"M-me too," said Mahiru, nodding fervently.

"Sweet! We get to go on an adventure! Let's go!" Ed cheered, pumping his fists in the air.

"I will come as well. I refuse to abandon my friends," Edd concluded, crossing his arms.

The two vampire men smiled. "Good," Berloz said. "Now, it is best that you all get packing. We leave as soon as you are ready."

"So Queen Maylis is responsible for sending you here? Can't say I'm surprised," Al said as he handed a loaf of bread to Ed, who put it into the leather pack the barkeep had given each of the children.

"Why not?" Mahiru asked.

"Well you see, Maylis is the last living Saint. While she _is _a great ruler, she tries to help the entire world, and even for someone like her that's hard. She usually employs younger Elementals or very skilled warriors to help her keep trouble from breaking out throughout Latora, but even then, she can't do everything. She probably wants you all for help on some mission." Al huffed. "Must be a _hell _of a mission if she takes you all from a separate dimension. Do you think you'll need this jerky?" the barkeep said, holding out a glass tube filled with dried meat.

"Maybe. The vampires said it's several hours' trip to her castle , but we may need it if things turn out differently. Put it in anyway," Edd said.

The group were in the storage area of the tavern, behind the bar counter, and Al was helping them pack. He had allowed them to take as much as they would like for the journey ahead.

"Y'all got some guts, I mean, jeez. You kids are asked in the presence of the Queen! I mean sure, Devon had the same treatment but..."

"Devon met Maylis!?" Eddy said, dropping a can of peaches in his pack.

"Yep! She gave him a medal of honor for protecting the peace of the vampire people."

"Dang. Too bad he said he can't come." The children had tried asking the doctor earlier if he would come with them, but the elder Elemental refused, saying that his place was in the town doing his work as doctor.

"It is. From what Devon told me, she was one hell of a chess player," Al said.

Eddy was sorting through the jars of food when suddenly, he found something in the back of a cabinet. Curious, he pulled it forward. It appeared to be a large, deep blue crystal, about the size and width of a large USB drive.

"Hey, what's this?"

Al looked up. "Well, shit!" Al barked as he looked at the object. "Devon's old totem! That oldbastard must've hid it in here after the war!"

"Totem?" Eddy asked. "What's that?"

"Totems are special relics that gather Quanta to their holders," Al answered.

"And what is Quanta?" Edd asked, now more confused then before.

"Quanta's basically Elemental energy. There's all sort of gadgets for measuring it, experimenting with it, all that." Al shrugged. "It's complicated stuff."

"So it makes your Elemental powers stronger?" Ed said.

"Exactly, though all totems are affilated with one element. Devon's totem will only work for a Water Elemental, for example," Al said, looking at it. He gently raised his brow.

"Sure chose an odd place to hide it," Al muttered. "By the way, is Crush acompanying you all?"

Edd nodded. It did not take much convincing for the Highland Goat to join them. Besides, Edd felt safe with Crush beside him.

"That's good, but, before you go, you better give that back to Devon," the bartender said, pointing at the crystal. "He might want it back."

The children nodded and left the tavern to go to the doctors office, to say their goodbyes to Devon.

As they were coming up on the doctor's office, Mahiru began talking.

"G-guys..?" she stammered. "I'm really worried..."

"No need to fret, Mahiru," Edd said gently. "You're not the only one. We're all stressed."

"N... no, you don't get it." She gave a small gulp. "The- the people that go to my s-school. Some of them are... really strange," she said.

"Have you met the people on our street?" Eddy sniped.

"W-what do you mean?" Mahiru asked.

"Well for one, there's Ed," Eddy said, pointing at the oaf. "Also, we have Jonny, who hangs out with a plank of wood and talks to it like it's alive, then Sarah who's the biggest rage-aholic in the frickin' world and she's only ten, and then theres Rolf and ohh boy. The dude like moved to the culdesac when he was five, and he does a whole bunch of weird crap. He locked Ed in a shed because he thought Ed was in league with a sheep thief, he has head-shrinking pimple cream... he's just really weird."

"There was also that one time he beat you with a fish because you threw away his sea cucumber balls," Edd added.

"W-what?" Mahiru looked to Eddy. "Is that... true?"

The scam artist groaned. "Yeah. I still have the bruises to prove it." He lifted his T-shirt and revealed to Mahiru an ugly, blue-black, fish-shaped bruise on his stomach.

"Hey, is that Devon?" Ed remarked, pointing.

They all turned around, the conversation dropped, to see that indeed, Devon was walking up the street, a bag slung over his shoulder.

He saw the children and smiled, showing his teeth. He jogged the rest of the way to the children.

"Hello there, you four!" he said cheerfully, nodding to them.

"Hey, Devon. Uhh, what you got in the bag?"

The old Elemental looked at the sack and cracked a small smile.

"Know this. I am still set on my decision not to come, but I will not let you all go without a little present from me." The Elemental dipped his hand into the bag and pulled out four objects.

"Totems?" Eddy said aloud.

"Why yes, Eddy. How did you know what they were?" Devon said to the short Ed.

"Because we were gonna give this back to you." Eddy fished the crystal out of his pocket. When Devon saw it, his dark blue eyes went wide.

"My old totem! I thought I had put it in the back of a cabinet in the tavern," he remarked as he took the crystal from Eddy's hand.

"You did. We were looking back there for supplies, and we found it." Eddy explained. "What do you do with it anyway, wear it?"

"Why, yes. In fact, I used to wear it as an ear piercing." Devon pocketed the crystal. "My natural abilities have increased to the point where I no longer need the totem, but thank you for finding it."

"Now..." Devon smirked. "About the ones I got for you all."

Devon picked from the handful of jewelry a bracelet with a pink gem on it. "Edd, with two Ds, this is your totem. I got it from a merchant on the Zephyr Island capital: Highgust." Devon then pulled out an arm bracer studded with light blue crystals "Here is yours, Eddy. This one, I was given by a man who I saved in the war."

The next item the old doctor procured was a elegant ring, with a single large teal crystal embedded in it. "Ed, here is your totem. Apologies if you think it is too much like a wedding ring for your taste. The person who gave it to me did so because the daughter who it was intended for turned out to be non-Elemental."

"And finally, here is your totem, Mahiru." Devon held up a long necklace studded with black crystals. A pair of bat wings, the symbol of Darkness, was carved out of the same crystal and put in a small silver medallion at the center.

"Wow!" Eddy said as he stared at Mahiru's totem. "Where did you get _that _one!?"

"Maylis herself gave it to me," he said with a smile. "Won it after I beat her at chess." He chuckled. "She said it was the first time she had ever lost ."

Mahiru smiled slightly and accepted the totem. "Thank you, Devon... I'd like to make it a relic..."

"Thank you for the gifts, Devon," Edd said as he clipped on his bracelet. It fit him perfectly, much like his sword.

"Oh, and a little advice from an old warrior," Devon said to the boys. "Something soldiers around here do is they name their weapons. They believe it gives the weapon a soul and makes it stronger." He shrugged "I was never able to do it- my only weapon was my Elemental powers."

"Really?" Eddy eyed his bow. What sort of name would he give a weapon?

"Oh! Oh! Oh !I got the best name for my weapon!" Ed exclaimed, He took out his broad sword and held it in his hands. "From now on you will be known as the Electracutioner!"

"_Electracutioner_?" Edd said aloud. "Why would you name it _that_?"

"Because, Double D," The oaf stated in a voice that seemed to say that the nerd already knew why " I had killed that giant spider by electrocuting it so: Electracutioner!"

"Okay, then." Edd said. He thought for a moment, his well-read brain cogitating, before a name popped into his mind. "I'll call my weapon Lucente."

"Well..." Eddy said, cupping his chin. What could he call his bow? Something catchy, easy to say but unforgettable. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. "Trickshot! I'll call my bow Trickshot!" he exclaimed at his brilliance.

Mahiru frowned. "I don't have a weapon." She looked at the symbol on the back of her hand, and her frown deepened. "I don't even know how to use my powers," she said glumly.

Devon smiled. "Heh. You should have no worries about not knowing how to use your powers. You're going to see Maylis after all, and she is the original Darkness Elemental. There is no better teacher than her," he said easily. "Oh, by the way. If she challenges you to chess, don't accept the offer. There's a reason why her title on the town mural is Maylis the Cunning."

Edd then thought of something. "Maybe we should revisit the mural and see what Maylis looks like. It will only take a few minutes, and Al probably has our supplies packed for us by now."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," Eddy said. "Sides, she's a vampire. Her looks couldn't have changed that much between then and now. Uh, when was 'then', anyway?"

"About three thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred," Devon said evenly.

"Ah," Eddy grunted.

The four young Elementals walked to the mural in silence, now thinking about the journey ahead and the questions for the Saint.

"Well, here we are," Edd said as he looked at the mural.

Searching the mural, they soon found the section with Maylis in it. In the picture there, was a woman about the age of thirty, around Edd's mother's age. Unlike the tired appearance of Edd's mother, however, this woman was beautiful, almost like a supermodel. She had long black hair that flowed down to her knees, almost like liquid night. Her body was pale and, even as a painting, gave off a sense of cold, austere beauty, even with her large bust and hips. Her attire was unusually somber for a queen- a simple black dress, bound at the waist with an iron-grey belt, that looked more like a mourner's dress than one befitting a queen.

"Damn! She is _hot_!" Eddy said staring at the portrait in delight. However, his mood was ruined when he saw Maylis's face. It was just as beautiful as the rest of the vampire queen, but something about her deep red eyes gave the beauty a sinister, terrible quality. Eddy shuddered and averted his gaze- even as a painting, those eyes belied a dark, fearsome.

"Eddy! Don't make such vulgar comments at such a respected figure!" Edd admonished.

"Yeah, I don't really care anymore. Her eyes are kind of a turn off," Eddy said, looking at them. "I'll stick with Nazz."

Crush then landed by the children in his regular-sized eagle form. "Devon told me you were here," he said as he changed back into goat form. "It is time for us to go. Al has your things packed and Berloz said that they're ready when you are."

"I think we've finished what business we have here," Edd said. "Let's go."

The unlikely team proceeded back to Al's tavern and town hall, and as they did, Eddy looked back at the painting of Maylis.

"Sheesh," he muttered under his breath. "I can't believe we're gonna meet some kind of monster queen."

The group made their way to the town hall where the vampire messengers were, and found them standing outside the building with Al, who was loading their packs onto the chariot.

"Ahh, there you all are," Delkaz said as they approached. "You all ready?"

"Yes we are, sir," Edd responded. "Are we all going to ride on the chariot?"

Delkaz looked to the chariot. It was rather small for the group.

"I see what you mean. Berloz, if you will." Delkaz asked.

Berloz nodded and flexed his hand toward the chariot, and immediately it began to tremble and shake. Its body began to stretch and widen- then, two more wheels sprouted out from the back, and a row of four seats popped up in the back and then two in the front. Finally, the transformation ceased, and the chariot was now a carriage. The wyvern pulling the thing did not seem at all startled by the changes, as if it were accustomed to such strange happenings.

"Um... about- about the dragon..." Mahiru spoke up. "Does he... bite?"

"Not riders," Berloz said. "It is, however, trained to bite those who they believe are threats," He explained. "We were all given trained wyverns like this because of..."

"Because of what?" Eddy asked .

"The False gods." Delkaz said grimly.

"The who?" Eddy asked.

"We're not sure of that ourselves. Not much is known about them... they just suddenly appeared one day and started wreaking havoc on places all around Latora," Berloz said with a shiver. "They're very dangerous and powerful Elementals. Some say they're strong enough to rival Master Devon."

"Wait, is arresting these guys our mission from Maylis?" Eddy said, trying to fit the pieces together in his head.

"Who knows?" Delkaz said. "But we better get going." He leaned towards Eddy. "And between you and me, all of us messengers made a bet that the last person to deliver their passengers had to clean out the wyvern roost, and I do not wish to be the one to do it," he said in a low tone.

Eddy nodded, understanding where the vampire was coming from. The group got on the carriage in single file, followed by the vampires.

"YAAH!" Delkaz yelled, whipping the reins that held the wyvern in place. It roared, and took off at a gallop, pulling the carriage along.

God! It was _fast_! All of the passengers were pushed back in their seats by the sheer speed, eyes wide open. Mahiru shrieked in terror as the carriage racketed through town, nearly bowling over several pedestrians.

Soon Crush was flying by the carriage, a giant eagle once more. He turned to the children and gave them a small wink. "Quite the ride, eh?" he said, giving a laugh.

"Personally I prefer riding on you!" Edd shouted over the wind.

Four hours later, the group was flying high in the skies of Latora. The kids had finally gotten used to the speed, but just in case, they were all gripping the bottom of there seats, knuckles white.

"Excuse me... Delkaz, is it?" Edd called to the rider, who turned his head toward the boy. "How much longer till Maylis's palace?"

"About ten hours." Delkaz said "Shademoore, the vampire capital, is far in the west of Latora."

Suddenly the wyvern in front screamed, and before anyone knew anything, there was blood streaming from its wing, blood flying everywhere, splattering hot and thick on the faces of the carriage passengers.

"Oh my god!" Edd screamed in terror.

"What the hell is going on!?" Eddy yelled.

"We're not sure!" Delkaz screamed. He had let go of the reins, letting the injured wyvern slump over. "It must be one of the False Gods!" He looked forward at the ground, which was rocketing towards them. "_**We're about to craaaaaash!**_"

Everyone braced themselves for impact with the ground. Eddy was not a religious person, but now, he was saying every last prayer he'd learned in church. Edd was likewise praying, mumuring words in Hebrew. Mahiru and Ed were just screaming.

_"I'm going to die," _Eddy was thinking.

_"My life is flashing before my eyes,"_ Edd was thinking.

_"This isn't fun at all,"_ Ed was thinking.

_"I want Shin'ya,"_ Mahiru was thinking.

When all seemed lost, though, it was Crush to the rescue.

"Hold on, everyone! I'm coming!" the Highland Goat shouted from high above.

"Crush!" everyone in the carriage shouted. Crush flew in close to the carriage and, using his massive talons, picked up the children and the vampires.

He then set them down on top of a hill, followed by a crashing noise somewhere further away ,which was undoubtedly the carriage.

"What the &amp;#$! hit the dragon!?" Eddy yelled.

Crush turned into a large German Shepherd and looked around alertly.

"I'm not sure. I saw nothing fly next to the wyvern. Its wing just exploded, and now..." He gestured to the small dragon, who was huddled up at the foot of the hill, whimpering in pain.

"Hello there," a feminine voice said.

The group whipped around. Standing below them, on the other side of the hill, was a figure in a hooded, golden robe.

Delkaz drew a black dagger out from his waistcoat pocket. "Who are you?"

"You may call me... Destiny." Mahiru, studying the figure, got the distinct impression that under the hood, she was smiling.

"Are you a False God?" Beloz said,joining his companion with a dagger of his own.

"You may call us that," Destiny said in perfect calm. She took a small step forward, but the two vampires hissed, both showing a pair of large canines.

"Get one step closer to us or our charges, and we'll drain you dry!" Berloz snarled.

Destiny, as she called herself, snickered. "You lie, Berloz. I know you do not drink blood."

The vampire took a step back. "How can you possibly know my name?" he said, red eyes wide.

"Oh, Berloz." Destiny clicked her tongue and shook her head. "I know you and your companion Delkaz very well indeed. Your names, your parents, your allegiances, your romances, your whole histories. I have studied you two since birth, learning your habits... all for this very day."

"Why?" Delkaz growled, his dagger raised.

"Why else? To kill you and your charges." Suddenly, a silver whip formed in her hand. She flicked her wrist out towards Delkaz, who raised his dagger to defend himself, but the whip wrapped itself around the dagger. The False God pulled her hand back, ripping the dagger away, then, while it sailed through the air, she caught it with her free hand then spun around on her heel and threw the dagger. It gleamed as it cut through the air, a beautiful death in motion. Then, almost as if it had teleported, it buried itself up to the hilt in Berloz's chest, which was now spouting out deep red blood.

The vampire messenger gasped in pain, clutching at his chest. "You bitch!" he whined. "A silver dagger!"

"Oh, yes. I made sure that the dagger was silver, given your race's little... allergy." She clicked her tongue again. "I also found something else about you vampires. As you well know, decapitation is a surefire way to kill you all, but do you know that actually, it's breaking your brain stem that kills you? I could just snap your necks and be done with you."

"You wouldn't dare," Delkaz rasped, hunching over the body of Berloz. "You wouldn't."

"I would." Destiny turned away. "But I don't particularly feel like doing so right now... so I'll leave your little friend there to his fate." She raised her left arm high, revealing a hand with the index and middle fingers outstretched, said something unintelligible, and vanished.

The children ran over to Delkaz, who was leaning over his friend's body, holding Berloz close.

"What just happened!?" Eddy said in shock.

"That bitch used a silver dagger on Berloz! We vampires are extremely vulnerable to silver- it is one of the few things that can for sure kill us!" Delkaz opened his waistcoat pocket once more and drew forth a vial of blue liquid. "This is Silverbane- the antidote to silver poisoning! Ed, force Berloz's mouth open! Mahiru, take the knife out of his chest!" he commanded.

Ed nodded, worked his fingers between Beloz's lips, and started to pull. Even with his strength, it was difficult; the man's jaw was clenched like a vise. At last, though, his mouth started to come open "Now! put the stuff in his mouth!"

Delkaz shook his head. "Mahiru must first pull out the dagger!"

Mahiru nodded grimly and grabbed the hilt of the dagger. It was slick with the vampires blood. She wrenched it out of Berloz's chest, eliciting another spurt of blood and a groan from Berloz.

Delkaz then tipped the vial upside down into Berloz's open mouth, and after swallowing the blue liquid inside, the vampire began to convulse. Eventually, he sat up and turned over, vomiting out a black substance.

Edd backed up. "Is that supposed to happen?" he asked, pointing with a quivering finger at the vomiting vampire.

Delkaz nodded. "It hurts, yes, but it excises the terrible poison."

"Oh, good," Edd said, shaking. "Now if you will excuse me..." He turned and ran down the hill. After he reached the bottom, nasty, wet retching noises could be heard.

"Weak stomach, huh?" Delkaz said.

"Oh yeah," Eddy said as both nerd and vampire vomited.

"That woman must have been a Time Elemental," Crush said grimly as he walked over to the group in goat form.

"I suspect so..." Delkaz said, rubbing his chin. "An unbelivably skilled one, at that. She was somehow able to replace my obsidian dagger with a silver one, before I could even blink."

"How can a Time Elemental do that?" Eddy inquired.

"She probably just sent my dagger to some unknown point in time, where a silver dagger existed, and switched my dagger with it," Delkaz explained. "Though even for skilled Time Elementals, that is difficult. She must be older than she seems. You can never really tell with Time Elementals."

"Mm. What the heck is her deal, anyway? Poppin' out of nowhere and trying to kill us like that..."

"It could be that she just wanted to scare us, show us how powerful she is. Or she wants to keep you all away because she knows what you are... And could be capable of."

"Huh, well if she meant to scare us it sure as hell worked," Eddy grouched. "I mean, not only did she injure the wyvern without us seeing, but also she managed to nearly kill Berloz," he said, pointing at the vampire messenger, who was now thankfully healing.

"Maybe, but we must not deter from our course," Delkaz said as he jogged down the hill to the injured wyvern. Slowly, Delkaz looked the creature over. The right wing was totally busted, slashed right through the bone. Flying would be impossible for it for a very long time.

"How's the dragon?" Ed called from the top of the hill.

"The right wing is practically sliced clean off! It won't be flying us to the castle," the vampire said with a frown.

"May I make a suggestion?" Edd piped in, now recovering from his sickness episode.

"What do you have in mind?" Delkaz asked as he got up.

"Well, I'm sure that you know Crush can shapeshift, being a Highland Goat, so I presume that he might be able to turn into something to fly us the rest of the way to the castle," the Eds' voice of reason explained.

Delkaz shook his head. "The chariot is broken and we would have to carry the wyvern back. The stablemaster is absolutely livid when the wyverns are left out in the cold."

"Well, maybe he can turn into something big enough to carry us all?" Edd turned to Crush. "Can you become something of those specifications?" Edd asked the goat.

"Hmm. I might have something I can do..." Crush said. "I'll turn into what I have in mind. But you all might want to get a good distance away," he suggested as he climbed back up the hill which Mahiru and the two other Eds were carrying Berloz, who was still convalescing, down.

Crush took a deep breath in and concentrated on the shape he had. Seconds later, a flash equivalent to a hundred suns went off on the hill, causing the group to cover their eyes at the flash.

When they turned around, Crush was standing there, but not in his goat form. Instead, a large, purple colored dragon stood atop the hill. Its scales were harshly sharp and hard looking. Its eyes were a startying yellow with narrow slits for pupils, and it had long dagger like teeth with in its mouth.

"An Amethyst Dragon!" Delkaz said in amazement. "I thought Highland Goats could only turn into creatures they had seen!?" he asked Crush, who was hunkering down so the others could get on his back .

"I was lucky enough to see one," Crush said. "Flew right over my village's head. It must have had a much more pressing objective to go to, rather than attack us."

"It's beautiful..." Eddy stroked Crush's scales softly.

"Most would find it that way. Amethyst Dragons are a race of creatures associated with Entropy. Some say Entropy Elementals can talk to them."

"Really?" Eddy said as he looked to Edd who was cautiously getting on. "Huh."

"Hang on!" Crush said and with one mighty flap of his wings and a shout from Mahiru, they were off.

"I HATE THESE WOODS! I HATE THE DORKS! I HATE THESE WOODS I HATE THE DORKS I HATE THESE WOODS!" Kevin shouted in the chant that he had been doing for the past hour. The group had eventually found their way out of the angel city and were now in a dense forest that they had been traveling through for the past day. To say that they were upset was a gross understatement. Even though they had escaped the angelic hordes that were chasing them, they were now completely lost in the woods, sweaty and filthy, their clothes torn and their skin covered in scratches and bug bites.

"Kevin, we get it! Now if you would SHUT UP, we might be able to think up a plan." Nazz snapped. She was tired of Kevin's complaining after an hour of putting up with it.

"Yes, if you do not keep your mouth shut as Go-go-Nazz-Girl suggested, Rolf will be forced to unleash all of his irritations upon you!" the farm boy finished, cracking his knuckles angrily.

"Well, can you blame me for being pissed?!" Kevin shot back. "We're in the middle of some god-knows-where forest with an army of angels chasing us down and not to mention, we all have super powers that are completely useless here!" he shouted, showing off the back of his right hand, which had the Water symbol on it.

"Cool it!" Nazz growled, fixing Kevin with a glare that shut him up immediately. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Listen we're all stressed right now, so lets just all calm down," She paused " we know the Eds couldn't have sent us here, and we don't know if the angels are gonna chase us. Third, our powers aren't totally worthless... after all, you guys pretty much took down an entire army of angels with your bare hands and some magic." She winked at the boys.

"Yeah, that was pretty badass" Kevin said with a smirk.

"Rolf agrees, it was most amazing what we had done." Rolf paused for a second. Then, his eyes flashed with realization. "Rolf just remembered!"

"What is it, Rolf?" Nazz asked the shepherd.

"The Ed-boys! They had also found strange orbs of power!" he said, remembering the meeting they had the last day they were in Peach Creek.

"Wait? So are you saying that they might be here!?" Kevin said.

"Maybe? Did you all see anyone else with odd orbs?"

"Well, u,umm..." Nazz considered.. "I don't remember seeing anyone else with them." She shrugged. "But that's a start, right?"

"Yah!" Rolf nodded. "If we find the Ed-boys, we may also find answers, no?" he theorized.

"Yeah, as much as I hate the dorks, they have a tendency to find things out," Kevin said.

The three then started walking again. Although there was no particular direction they were going, they knew that eventually they would come up on something- a cabin in the woods, maybe, or a tent. Anything hinting at civilization. After a while however, their energy was quickly gone, and so they decided to take a break in a small clearing.

"God, you'd think there would be at least one person out camping," Kevin said as he came to rest on a rock at the very edge in front of some bushes.

"To be honest, we were clinging to a pretty slim chance," Nazz grumbled, sitting cross legged on the ground.

"Rolf agrees," the blue haired boy said, slumping over and putting his hands in his pockets."Rolf will take watch, just in case," he said.

"Thanks dude," Kevin said.

Nazz sighed and looked to Kevin to say something but froze, her mouth clamped shut and her eyes going wide in horror...

"N-nazz?" Kevin said, fear creeping into his tone"What's wrong?" He began to sweat profusely as he imagined the myriad things Nazz could be seeing..

"Kevin..." she said in a minute whisper, "L-l-look behind y-you..."

Fearfully, Kevin slowly craned his neck to his left what he saw looked like a mixture of a robotic claw and a machine gun, pointing right at him.

"_Ugokanai_," the voice of a girl said.

"Wh-what?" Kevin said, sweat pouring down his face.

"_Ugokanai_!" The bearer of the arm came into view. It was a young girl, about their age. She had long strawberry-blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her figure was tall and lithe, and there was a suspicious glare on her face. She was wearing a white waistcoat over a pink plaid blouse and skirt. Kevin personally would have found her hot if not for two things, those being her arms. One was the robotic gun-hand pointed at his face. The other appeared to be plated with white and black metal, looking every bit as mechanical as the other arm. "_Anata wa dare desu ka? Koko wa doko?_"

"Listen, chick, I don't understand a word you're saying," Kevin said putting his hand up defensively.

Rolf clapped a hand over Kevin's mouth. "Let Rolf handle this, shovel-chin Kevin-boy," he said. He cleared his throat and turned to the robotic girl. "Ahem. _Konnichiwa,_" he greeted, bowing politely.

The girl looked startled. "Ah- _konnichiwa,_" she replied, bowing as well. "_Nihongo o hanasu ka?_"

"_Hai,_" Rolf responded with a nod. "_Ore wa Rolf Bjornsen. O-namae wa nandesu ka?_"

"_Watakushi wa Hanabusa Sumireko_," the girl answered. She smiled a bit and retracted the gun from Kevin's head, the strange weapon turning into a normal(ish) hand as she did. _Hajimemashite, Bjornsen-san._"

"Are they speaking Japanese?" Nazz wondered.

"I think so," Kevin said, dumbfounded. "Yo Rolf, ask if she speaks English!"

"_Hajimemashite, Hanabusa-san._" Rolf bowed again, then shook the robot girl's hand. "_Eigo o hanasu ka? Ore no tomodachi-_" The farm boy indicated Nazz and Kevin. "_-ga nihongo o wakaranai._"

"_Eigo?"_ The girl blinked, then chuckled a little. "Why didn't you say so?" she said, finally speaking English. "I do speak English quite well. You have very good command of Japanese for being foreign, Bjornsen-san."

"Please, just call me Rolf," the farm boy said politely.

"I shall," the robot girl said with a smile. She then turned to Nazz and Kevin, the two looking confused to no end. "My apologies. My name is Sumireko Hanabusa," she said, reaching out her robotic right hand.

"Uhh... I'm Kevin Bentham," Kevin said. He shook her hand. "And you're... a robot?"

"A cyborg, technically," Sumireko said casually. Her gun-arm changed and became a regular arm, albeit cybernetic like her other. "My limbs are cybernetic prosthetics."

"Huh." Kevin said. He had never been scared of a girl- of anyone, really, with the obvious exception of the Kanker Sisters- until now.

"I think that's pretty cool!" Nazz chimed in. "My name's Nazz van Bartonschmeer." She shook Sumireko's hand as well. "How'd you get them?"

Sumireko frowned. "It's a bit of an unpleasant story. I don't wish to bore you with the details at this moment."

"Thats cool." Nazz dismissed. From what she knew through watching sci-fi movies, people became cyborgs because of accidents and other such circumstances.

"Indeed." Sumireko brushed at the hem of her sundress. "Do any of you three know where we are? I woke up here not long ago. Are we in America or Japan, by chance?"

"Tch. We're in neither- unless America or Japan suddenly got a population of psycho angels and people with superpowers," Kevin deadpanned.

Sumireko looked at Kevin with confusion. "I would say we were in Japan, if not for the angel part," she said.

"What are you talking about?" Rolf inquired.

"Some of my acquaintances have certain... abilities of note." Sumireko shrugged. "It isn't important right now," she said. "What we should be focusing on is how to get out of here, and personally, I want to learn whether or not the strange marking on my body has anything to do with our current situation." She held up her left hand, and with a jolt, Nazz, Kevin and Rolf saw that she had the exact same symbol on her hand that Nazz did.

Eventually, Sumireko caught Nazz, Kevin, and Rolf staring at her hand. "Is something wrong?" she inquired.

"That symbol! Nazz has it too!" Kevin said.

"You mean this?" the cyborg girl said, holding her hand out "It appeared on my hand all of a sudden, when I touched a white globe I found in my dresser drawer."

"Same thing happened to mine!" Nazz said, showing her hand. "Though I found my orb in my attic."

Sumireko examined both her and Nazz's symbols. "What do they do?" she asked.

"Well, I shot a bolt of light from my hand..." The American girl explained, thinking back to earlier.

"That's incredible!" Curiosity piqued, Sumireko looked to Kevin and Rolf. "Can you all do that as well?" she said, cocking her head..

"Well, no, but I can make water!" Kevin said excitedly, then focused and made a tiny amount of water squirt from his palm.

Sumireko stared, unimpressed.

"It was cooler the first time I did it..." he said, looking embarassed. A blush growing hot on his cheeks

"Rolf appearently aquired super strength." Rolf picked up a stone about the size of his fist. He threw it, but instead of sending it flying like the angel priest had, it floated in the air, Gravity's hold lessened upon it. "Or... maybe Rolf can make things float?"

"That dude you whacked mentioned something about you being a Gravity Elemental, so maybe both?" Nazz theorized.

Sumireko looked amused. "This certainly seems like an interesting development," she chuckled. "What do you say that we four work together to find a way home from... wherever we are?"

"Good idea. Do you know a way to a town not in that direction?" Kevin pointed to the north-east.

"Why not in that direction?" Sumireko asked.

Kevin, Rolf, and Nazz looked at one another with expressions that seemed to say they did not want to remind themselves of it. "Me and Rolf are kinda... fugitives," Kevin said, rubbing the back of his head.

"Fugitives?!" Sumireko's eyes widened. "What was Nazz-san, then?" she asked pointing to the girl.

"Apparently, I look exactly like a goddess or a saint or something that a bunch of angels worship," she said drily.

"Er." Sumireko had no response. "Fair enough. Let's go that way, then," she said, pointing southwest.

"Fine by me," Kevin muttered.

The trio turned quartet began walking to the southwest, as the sun set. Eventually, the pack came across a small cave in a hill. Deciding that it would be better to sleep there rather than outside where something could spot them, they hustled inside. The inside of the cave was cold, dark, and spooky, but it was better than sleeping out in the open.

"Rolf will take watch," the farm boy said as he made his way to the mouth of the cave, while Nazz, Sumireko, and Kevin explored it to make sure something else wasn't already living inside.

"Wait up, dude. Don't you need something to, like, defend yourself?" Kevin said.

"Shovel-Chin-Kevin-boy is right," Rolf said, cupping his chin. Before they could find something to arm themslves with, though, Nazz's calls attracted their attention.

"Umm, guys? You might want to come back here," Nazz called. She and Sumireko had gone farther back in to the cave.

"What's up?" Kevin turned on his heel and proceeded over to the girls.

"We've found something quite bizarre over here," Sumireko said, indicating something on the wall. Kevin looked closer and saw a cave painting. He grimaced, reminded of a brief but nerve-wracking hoax perpetuated by the Eds in which cave paintings had figured.

The drawing was remarkable. The amount of detail was that of a professional artist and it seemed ad if it was capturing a series of events.

"What is it?" Kevin said as he stared at it.

"Nazz-san and I believe it is supposed to tell a story of some sort... the only issue being, we're not quite sure of what that story is." Sumireko said.

Curiousity piqued, Kevin scrutinized the cave painting. The painting had twelve figures, all vastly different in appearance. One was nearly white in skin color and had deep red eyes. Another had long white hair and pointed ears. Kevin could even swear that one was- of all things- a _goat_. The painting seemed to be depicting them joining together to wage war upon a huge, shadowy mass full of nameless horrors. Kevin shivered. "Creepy picture."

"I'll say," Nazz said with a shiver. "What's that black blob thing supposed to be anyway?"

Sumireko looked up above the large shadow, where one word was scratched into the dun rock. "Void..." she read.

"Void?" Kevin said, counfsed. Before he could ask another question, the ground began to tremble horribly, raining dust down from the top of the cave. All four of the kids were pitched forward and backward, landing on their backs and stomachs all over the place.

"What was that?" Kevin said.

"It felt like a small tremor, barely a two on the magnitude scale," Sumireko said. She then paused. "It felt very, very close." Suddenly, her eyes went wide. "And it's moving!"

All four kids jumped out of the way as the ground suddenly broke beneath their feet and a giant thing shot out of the shattered earth, roaring.

"Holy shit!" Kevin screamed.

"Holy shit!" Nazz screamed.

"HOLY SHIT!" Rolf screamed.

The creature that popped out of the ground looked like something ripped from a movie on Syfy. Its body was covered in wrinkled, tan-gray skin. It had a gigantic, beaklike mouth comprised of a large upper piece and three lower pieces. When it opened its mouth, instead of teeth, it had several orange tentacles, each with a mouth and a row of inhumanly sharp teeth.

"What the _flying_..." Before Kevin could complete his sentence, one of the tentacles shot out at him. Its mouth opened wide, but before it could reach him it was blasted away by a rain of bullets from Sumireko's arm.

"We need to get to more open ground!" Sumireko shouted. She ducked a flailing tentacle and shot forth another volley of bullets. The monster shrieked in annoyance as it was hit, the bullets bouncing off its hide like pebbles.

"Blast! Its outer hide isbullet-proof!" she cursed.

They all then bolted toward the mouth of the cave in a mad dash. The creature, in pain from having one of it sensitive tentacles shot off, went back under the ground.

"Do you think it'll stop chasing us?" Nazz said as they ran.

"Rolf doubts that!" Rolf somersaulted forward as the horrible thing burst out of the ground again, ripping through layers of grass and sod.

Sumireko nodded in agreement. "It has a predator complex. We just harmed it and it views that as an insult." As she finished, she pointed at the worm creature and fired again, but just as last time, to no avail.

"Let Rolf try his hand!" Rolf commanded. He stepped up to the monster, breathed in deep, and bellowed, "THE SON OF A SHEPHERD CHALLENGES YOU, BEAST OF THE SOIL AND STONE!"

Rolf then rushed at the creature before any one could protest and with a shout of determination, he jumped at it. It proceeded to open its mouth, and swallow him whole with a loud gulp.

"ROLF!" The group screamed as it swallowed the shepherd boy.

Several of the worm's tentacles came out and ran over its lips, licking them. Then, it turned to the horrified group, but before it could do the same to them, a sudden bulge appeared in its gut then retracted just a quickly as it appeared.

"Is that..." Kevin said, pointing where the bulge had been.

"FOUL CREATURE!" a voice said from within the worm. "NOW YOU SHALL PERISH FROM AN INTERNAL BEATING! FEEL THE WRATH OF THE SON OF A SHEPHERD!"

An orange glow lit the worm from within, and suddenly, it started groaning and thrashing around as Rolf began pummeling it from within.

"Is he..." Sumireko began.

"Yep," Kevin and Nazz said in chorus.

The creature in its entirety flew up out of the ground and flopped on the surface, still being attacked by Rolf. After about half a minute of this spectacle, a red, gore-covered fist emerged from the back of the creature, making it scream in pain.

"Shoot here, Hanabusa-san! Here!" Rolf said, raising his hand and shaking it.

"But I might shoot you!" Sumireko worried.

"Do not worry about Rolf! Just shoot!"

"If you say so!" Sumireko crossed her fingers, aimed her gun-arm, and began firing.

It pierced the hole that Rolf had made easily, making its way into the monster's body. It passed through skin, fat, fascia, nerves, muscle, until it hit bone, and the monster screamed in agony.

"Keep shooting, uh, Sumi-whatever!" Kevin encouraged.

With that, she continued to rain bullets upon it futher expanding the hole and flinging blood and guts every which way. Some got in Nazz's hair, causing her to scream, but she recognized the importance of what was going on and regained her composure.

After she was done, she let out a sigh, and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. "Where are you, Bjornsen-san?" she said carefully, looking over the corpse.

"Rolf is here!" Rolf waved his hand out of the bullet hole again. "Dig Rolf out, please? The stink of blood is invading Rolf's nostrils."

"With pleasure." Sumireko converted her gun into a claw and approached the dead monster. With surprising ferocity, she tore into the thing, ripping chunks of flesh out, until she managed to pull Rolf out. The blood-soaked farm boy shuddered.

"That was not an experience Rolf wishes to repeat," he said bluntly.

"I can't imagine why," Sumireko joked. She bent down and grabbed the corpse, before lifting it up, heaving it back, and hurling it into the distance. The dead worm went flying, spinning through the air, before it hit the ground somewhere in the distance with a loud and messy splat.

"Rolf, that was awesome!" Kevin started, but stopped a distance away from his friend when a smell passed through his nostrils. "Ugh! Rolf, you smell like crap!" the biker gasped, putting his hand over his mouth and nose.

"Rolf would think Kevin-boy would smell this way too, after being imprisoned in the stomach of a bloodthirsty creature of death!" Rolf sniped.

Nazz then walked over, careful to breathe through her mouth to avoid the smell. "So, uhh, how did you do that, Rolf?"

"Well," Rolf considered. "Rolf remembered our flight from the angels and the power Rolf used to impede them."

"Yeah?" Nazz said, the memory of Rolf throwing the angel priest running through her mind.

"Rolf made Gravity bend to his will, allowing his strength to increase."

"Oh," Nazz said after he had explained. If he could use Gravity to make himself stronger, how much stronger could he get?

"Sounds more like momentum, if you ask me," Sumireko said.

"You mean mass and speed making an object stronger in a collision?" Nazz said, remembering a science lesson she'd taken once.

Sumireko nodded "I think that whatever Gravity means here, it applies to more than 'bodies of matter are attracted to one another'."

"I see where you're going," Nazz said, cupping her chin and thinking. "Maybe it applies to all laws of physics, not just what goes up must come down."

"Like magnetism?" Kevin popped in suddenly.

Sumireko raised her brow. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, if you said it applies to more than bodies being attracted to each other, I figure it could work like that, too." Kevin shrugged. "I dunno, I'm just a biker."

Sumireko considered that. "You might actually have something there... Maybe we should wait till we're more informed before we think on this too hard," she said.

"Yeah..." Kevin agreed, "'cause the most I've ever gotten in science was a seventy."

The cyborg grimaced at the thought.

"Crush, could we go down?" Edd said to the goat-turned-dragon.

"Why is that, Edd?" Crush said, cocking his head to the skinny Ed.

"Well, it's just... being up this high, it makes me somewhat nauseous," he said, clenching his stomach lightly.

"I see. Well, fear not. In a few minutes' time, we will be at Shademoore," Crush said with a smile.

"Oh, tha goodness," Edd said. He would be glad to be on the ground again- landing on it, that is, and not nearly crashing because of a deranged Time Elemental.

The others had somehow fallen asleep during the flight. Ed was curled up into a ball near the disabled Wyvern, which had its head under its working wing. Delkaz had fallen asleep with his arm wrapped around the shoulders of Berloz, whose wound had healed for the most part, but every now and then he would groan in pain and cough up some black vomit. Eddy and Mahiru fell asleep on each others shoulders, Eddy snoring softly and Mahiru murmuring in her sleep.

"Is everyone okay back there?" Crush asked quietly. "How is Berloz?"

"For the most part he is doing fine. He coughs up some of that infection every now and then, but other than that, he's fine."

"Good, because he's a very good man. Takes orders well if he was willing to stand up to that harpy. I'm glad he's on our side." Crush chuckled to himself.

"Yes, it is good." Edd said, looking at the sick vampire. He paused as he then thought of something.

"Crush, I have a question," Edd said.

"Hmm?" Crush glanced at Edd with a golden eye.

"I know people obtain their Elemental powers through the Orbs, but how do they reach a specific person?" he said with a raised eyebrow.

Crush thought about that one, and shrugged slightly.. "Generally, Elemental Orbs are crafted by people distilling minor amounts of Elemental energy into a crystallized form, but if you're asking how and why they choose the people they do, they're normally either found through chance or passed down through families."

"And the Elemental Orb will then activate?" he said.

"Usually, it activates when triggered by an existing Elemental or through reaction to strong emotion," Crush said with a nod, "But there are cases where people find Elemental Orbs, and the orbs just don't activate."

"Interesting." Edd pulled a notepad and pencil out of his pocket and began writing the information down.

"Why is that?" He asked as he scribbled.

"Well, there could be a multitude of reasons. For some, it is the wrong Element, and for others, the power of the Orb was drained by some outside force. But..."

"But what?" Edd asked at the goat-dragon's sudden pause.

"Some just are not meant to be Elemental," Crush said. Edd could see that there was a frown on his face, and he was looking down slightly.

"Are-are you okay?" Edd asked, worried about his friend. "Did something like that happen to you?"

Crush nodded grimly. "Every year where I live, a traveler goat brings by Elemental Orbs he finds on his travels, and allows young goats to see if one of them is their Element. The year I was old enough, I was so anxious. My father had already tried to see if I was the family element, Entropy... but I was not. So, we were hopeful that I would be an Elemental- just of a different element. Well, the day came, and I laid my hooves upon every orb the old goat had brought. And none of them worked. I was the first male in _sixteen _generations not to be an Elemental in my family. While I do pride myself on my status as a warrior... that was my biggest failure." The Highland Goat hung his head low.

"I'm sorry," Edd said sadly. He patted Crush's back. "But hey... it's not something you can change, right? It's just a matter of chance."

Crush sighed. "I suppose you are right. There's no way to change fate." He looked forward. "OH! Look! There's the castle," Crush said. Edd looked forward, and sure enough there was a silhouette of a castle not too far away.

"Wake everyone up, we'll be landing soon," Crush said as he began slowly descending.

Edd nodded and began walking to the others, tapping them on their shoulders or whispering to them to wake them up.

"Five more minutes, Mom, it's a Saturday," Eddy groaned as he woke up, only to collapse back to sleep a half second later..

"Ehh... we don't have our doctor's appointment until Wedneday, Shin'ya..." Mahiru sighed, half-asleep.

When Edd walked up to Ed, he was about to tap the tall guy's shouder, but then the usually slow Ed's hand shot out.

"The sum of the squared legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse!" Ed spouted as he shot awake.

Edd took a step back. Not only had his friend just said a math equation (CORRECTLY at that), but he did it with remakable fluidity.

"Are you... okay, Ed?" Edd asked the oaf.

"Huh? Oh! Yeah I'm swell Double-D!" Ed said with a goofy smile.

"Okay then..." Edd looked very uncomfortable. "We'll be at Maylis's castle shortly."

"Oh boy oh boy oh boy! I can't wait to get there!" Ed cheered, clapping excitedly. His claps woke Mahiru up.

"Yah-!?" She looked around. "What's going on?!"

"It's just Ed," Edd assured the girl. "But now that you're up, you might want to brace yourself. We're going to land soon."

That said, Mahiru looked around for something to brace herself against, and decided to grab one of the short spikes along the dragon's back. The others (sans Eddy, who was still asleep) followed suit, Delkaz throwing his arm over Berloz.

"Uhhh, hey, why are you all grabbing the spikes?" Eddy said as he finally awoke to see everyone getting ready to land.

"GOING DOWN!" Crush shouted. Just like that, he nosedived toward the center of the castle.

Eddy, who was not holding onto a spike, went flying with a scream. As he went soaring back, he grabbed Crush's tail and clung on for dear life.

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" Eddy screamed into the wind as they descended.

Finally they landed in the enormous courtyard, Crush spreading his wings as they settled.

The courtyard itself was made of some sort of jet-black material, like the rest of the palace, with a wide patch of pale green grass in the center. On the walls grew vines of evening stock, the bright purple flowers giving the courtyard a lighter feel despite the dark mineral it was made of. Walking around the courtyard were vampires in the same attire as Berloz and Delkaz. The sky above was foggy, as it had been earlier that day.

"Is Eddy alright?" Berloz moaned.

"Just fine!" Eddy snapped, clambering onto Crush's back once more.

Suddenly, several vampire guards rushed in through the various doors at the ends of the walled yard, armed with crossbows.

"Not again," Edd moaned.

"Stay where you are, or we'll fill you with crossbow bolts!" the head guard shouted.

"Wait!" Delkaz said, standing up with his hands held out defensively, sweat running down his brow.

"Delkaz?" One of the vampires asked, lowering his crossbow.

"Yes, it is me," Delkaz said. "Berloz and I have returned with our charges, but Berloz is injured. He has silver poisoning."

"Silver poison-!?" one of the guards choked.

"By the Twelve, quick! Send for a medic!" another called.

Berloz held his hand up. "No... need," he croaked out. "Used an antidote."

"Well I guess that is... BY THE SAINTS, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WYVERN!?" The guard shrieked, pointing at the injured wyvern, currently lying on its side. It wheezed feebly and gave the guard the stink-eye.

"Destiny happened," Delkaz growled. "We're here to take Ed Jones, Edd Rubin, Eddy McGee, and Mahiru Banba to see Queen Maylis."

"You're the second batch to arrive," one of the guards said as they dismounted from Crush, who promply changed into goat form afterwards.

"Who else?" Edd asked

"Maltan and Carvan arrived four hours ago, with four girls named..." The third guard thought for a bit. "Three of them were sisters... can't remember their names... fourth looked an awful lot like this white-haired girl here."

As the guard finished his statement, a door at the west end of the courtyard opened, and from it came...

"Uh-oh..." Ed murmured.

"Oh dear," Edd stammered.

"#$%!," Eddy swore.

"I don't believe it..." Mahiru gasped.

It was Lee, Marie, and May Kanker, alongside Shin'ya Banba.

They were supposed to be waiting for their meeting with Maylis, but all the excitement in the courtyard had drawn them to it like moths to a flame. As they walked in, May suddenly pointed and gave a gasp of joy.

"Look! It's my Ed!" she said excitedly.

"And there's Double D!" Marie said with a squeal.

"And my hunk! Eddy!" Lee got out some lipstick from her back pocket.

Shin'ya and Mahiru stared at one another.

"Shin'ya..?" Mahiru asked.

"Mahiru!" Shin'ya rushed towards Mahiru and tackled her, enfolding her lookalike in a tight hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

"My word!" Edd said as he gaped at the two girls. Without a shadow of a doubt, the two were a mirror image of the other. Both had the same white hair, same purple eyes, even the same scar.

Suddenly, though, Edd was tackled by his ever-so-passionate stalker, Marie Kanker.

"Pucker up, sweetie!" she said. She puckered her blood-red lips and moved in for a kiss.

"Oh, good lord! Get off of me!" Edd screamed in horror. And suddenly, before either of them knew it, Marie felt an obscene amount of weight at her shoes, and found that not only were they heavy, but they were too heavy! She couldn't even get up onto her feet! She teetered this way and that, unsteadily trying to regain her balance, but fell backward with a "Whoa!" and a thump.

"What the!?" She looked down and found her sneakers were now made of metal!

"Wow!" Edd said as he got up. "I didn't even need to focus any energy this time, I did it all by thought!"

"You did that?" Lee said as she walked up to the scrawny Ed. "How?!" she demanded.

And to the surprise of both Lee and Marie, a small, but very visible _smirk _appeared on Edd's face. "That's the power of Entropy," he said wryly, holding up his hand to show the two Kankers his Entropy mark. He lowered his hand, and Marie's shoes returned to normal.

"Hey, don't you have one of those funny things on the back of your hand too, Marie?" Lee said looking down at her sister.

"You do too," she said warily as she again tried to stand, showing them her skull marking.

"Yeah, but at least yours works." The redheaded Kanker said, showing her own mark.

"My word." Edd stared at the markings. "You're Elementals as well?"

"Thats what Carvan called us," Lee said with a shrug. "He said that May has 'yet to awaken' or some bull like that." She pointed at the youngest Kanker, who held up a brown orb to demonstrate.

"Yeah, he said I'll be an Earth Elemental, and that Marie is a Death Elemental and Lee is a Time Elemental," May said.

"Death?" Edd said warily.

"Time?" Eddy muttered, remembering their run in with Destiny.

Suddenly though, a vampire burst in through the north end of the courtyard. "Erm, Maylis is rather worried, she thought you girls had gotten lost or captured, and... er. Who are you all?" he said, pointing at the Eds and Mahiru.

"They're our charges, Carvan," Delkaz answered, Berloz hanging from his shoulder. "Ed, Edd, Eddy, and Mahiru."

"Oh. Oh, good," Carvan said with a then straightened up, fixing his waistcoat, and cleared his throat. "Queen Maylis is ready to see you now," he said formally. "If you will follow me, I shall direct you to her majesty." He bowed deeply at the waist.

"Finally," Eddy said under his breath. "Some answers."

The group then began to follow Carvan and Delkaz into the castle itself, a huge building of jet black.

As they walked in, they found the halls were lined with paintings. Not ordinary paintings- these were almost lifelike in detail and all were of Elementals, not just of Darkness but also all the other elements as well.

One had a single woman going up against a giant thing of scales and claws and teeth, with thousands of dark eyes. Around the woman, though, boulders the size of houses hovered almost like they were in orbit. Another depicted a burly looking man going up against an army of human-bear hybrids, wielding a whip of pure flame in each hand.

There was one in particular that caught Edd's attention. It showed an elf simply working in a laboratory, dressed in a white coat, green goggles covering his eyes. Even though his face was somewhat off because of the goggles, Edd swore that he looked like the elf that was in the mural at Castelia.

"Excuse me but, is that Saint Verderon?" Edd inquired, pointing at the painting.

"Why yes indeed," Carvan said as they continued to walk onward. "Verderon was regarded as one of the greatest scientists to exist. He was responsible for some of the greatest medical and engineering breakthroughs in our world. In fact, he was the one who discovered how to make Elemental Orbs."

"Hmm." Edd thought about this, looking over at Ed, who was staring at all the paintings in wonder "Hard to believe that the Saint that represents Ed's Element was a world-renowned scientist," he muttered.

Finally, they reached a large double door, obsidian black with gold patterns etched upon it.

"Queen Maylis specifically asked to speak to you all in private," Carvan said, his red eyes glancing at Crush. "I'm sorry, but you must remain here with us," he said.

"Fine, if it is the queen's orders," the goat said. He then looked to Edd. "Don't worry, I'll be right here if you need me."

Edd gave a small nod of understanding. To be perfectly honest, he would have preferred Crush to be by his side. The Highland Goat had been something of a comfort for him in this strange new world.

Slowly, the doors opened, revealing a somewhat sparse throne room compared to what they group was esxpecting. Not that the room was not luxurious, because it was. It was a wide-open, round room, lit only by filtered sunlight from a pair of windows at the back of the room, and a ring of candles that burned with a cold white flame along the walls. But the things that made it sparse looking were all the statues. Eleven perfectly carved statues of colossal size, all depicting one of eleven vastly different figures, lined the left and right sides of the throne room. Edd soon realized that these were statues of the Saints.

Closest to the door were effigies of Verderon the Wise, tall and stern, and Seraphitia the Pure, small and sunny-faced. Beyond them was Pierce the Strong, noble and sturdy, and Mairia the Valiant, the picture of cruel brilliance.

A human stood next to Mairia, looking very shy, and on the opposite side was a wolf-man with a gentle expression on his face, cradling a (small creature) in his arms. Next came one of the oddest of the Saints. He (Eddy presumed it was male) was an odd fusion of a moth and human, with two large mothlike wings and antennae sprouting from the top of his head, In addition, he seemed to have a tail like that of an alligator. Beside him was an extremely small man with a large beard that touched the ground in one hand he held a large war hammer in the other a chunk of stone.

Across from the bearded man (a dwarf?) was a beautiful woman, but much like the rest, what obscured her features from being entirely human were her abnormally large eyes and the gills poking out behind her ears, as well as her webbed hands and feet. Across from the gilled woman was a red-skinned man with pointed ears, both pierced by golden hoops, and a long, black ponytail, exuding an air of righteous fury in a battle stance.

The last statue of all made everyone who saw it, even Shin'ya, gasp in disgust and shock. It was of a tall, rangy... thing (male? female? something else entirely?) that looked as though God had forgotten how to build a human. It looked like a skeleton with flesh of all colors, brown, black, white, pink, stitched together and stretched drum-tight over its bones. It had no eyes and no nose- just gaping eye sockets and nose hole, seen through the patchwork skin. The horrible thing wore a tattered, ragged tunic and cloak, its limbs too long, its body too narrow.

"That is one _ugly-_looking..." Eddy began, not knowing what word to use to complete his sentence.

"Lich," a female voice, soft and melodic, spoke up.

The group looked around in puzzlement, but could find no indication to where the voice had come from.

"Despite their rather grotesque appearance, they are amiable. You would be hard-pressed to find a Lich who is selfish," the voice said.

Then a figure walked out from behind the statue of the 'Lich'. The figure was that of a female, perfectly formed. She walked with an ancient sort of elegance and power to her stride, and the group could tell even from a distance that she was not human in any sense of the word. Finally, in full light, the group saw the figure. She was wearing a dress that looked like that looked like it belonged to a mourner at a funereral- all black, except for the ends of the sleeves, which were a deep turquoise, and cascading down to her heels, revealing nothing but her white hands. She also wore a necklace of wooden beads in twelve colors. Black, blue, red, green, turquoise, purple, white, yellow, pink, brown, orange, the wooden necklace clung tightly to her pale neck. But the most startling feature of all was her eyes. They were almond-shaped and deep like wells, and her irises were deep red, like blood.

"Salutations, champions from another world," she said softly. "I am Queen Maylis... or Saint Maylis, if you prefer."

"A-an honor, I'm sure," Edd stammered, giving a quick bow. Maylis waved it off.

"I believe you have found your trip here sufficiently comfortable?" she inquired.

"Who gives a #$%+!?" Shin'ya barked, startling everyone. "What I wanna know is how we're here, why we're here, and more importantly, why the #%$! I'm outside of Mahiru's body!"

Maylis seemed unfazed. "I suppose you deserve to know that," was her calm response. "To answer your first question, I was able to bring you all here thanks to my friend Verderon."

"Wait a minute," Eddy said, holding up his hand. "Isn't Verderon, you know, uh, dead?" he said bluntly

Maylis cringed and gave a small glare Eddy's way. "Do not speak of my brother in arms so disrespectfully, impudent boy," she said icily. The hint of fangs glnted in her mouth.

Eddy took a small step back and gulped. "Y-yes ma'am." He said fearfully.

Maylis quickly recovered her composure and resumed, "While my beloved friend has... passed, his multitude of inventions still live on." She turned her head to look at the Verderon statue. "Come and I will show you what I mean. She walked behind the statues. The Eds, the Kankers, and the Banbas silently fell into step behind her, and found that there was a door behind each statue. They walked until they were at the door directly behind Verderon, where Maylis produced a small key, put it into the lock on the door and turned, resulting in a sharp click.

They all steped in to the room and Edd gave a loud gasp, the room was filed to the ceiling with mechanical things. All of them were colored in bronze and teal and oddly enough they were all functioning, humming, blinking, shining, buzzing. It was a cacophony.

"Did Verderon make all of these?" Edd wondered, marveling at the sheer amount of gizmos and doodads.

"Every last one," Maylis answered with a sad smile. "He used his mind to the fullest. Why, he made some of these in just a few hours time. But his most important invention is this one." Maylis said pointing.

The group looked over to were Maylis was indicating it looked like a telescope. It was bronze, like the other devices in the room, and had four lenses at the end.

"The heck is that?" Marie sniped. "A fancy telescope?"

"In a sense." Maylis brushed some dust off of the thing with her hand. "Verderon named it the Gazer." She then looked through the lens. "It is much more than your run-of-the-mill telescope." The vampire queen stood up and stepped away slightly.

"What do you mean?" Edd asked.

"Look for yourself," she said, holding her arm out to it.

Edd raised his brow and slowly approached the device, taking small, wary steps. He then bent over slightly and looked into the lens. All he saw was darkness. "I don't see anything."

"Think of someone or something you wish to see." Maylis instructed. As she said so, Edd thought. He would like to know what his parents were doing; they must be worried sick. As he thought, he looked back down the eyepiece. For a split second, there was darkness again, but soon a swirl of colors overtook his vision, and the next thing he knew, he was looking at...

"Mother and Father!" Edd gasped. In the lens, he could see his parents working in a laboratory, on the job apparently. They didn't seem very fussed, and if anything, they looked weirdly uncaring about Edd's plight, as though they didn't even know he was gone.

Maylis gave a small smile. "The Gazer is meant to view across the many dimensions that make up our universe. That is how I located you all. Now, flick that little switch by your pinky finger," she commanded.

Edd did as he was told, and the image became disorted for a split second, but then came back in to focus, with a new addition. Now, surrounding his mother and father were translucent grey blobs that shifted as the adults moved.

"What is that?" Edd asked, pulling away from the eyepiece.

"An aura," Maylis said matter-of-factly. "It is a sort of energy that all sentient beings have. For most it is just a grey blob, but for Elementals, or those who are destined to become Elemental, it will have color and shape. It was how I knew you all were Elementals."

"Ahh," Edd said as he continued to gaze. Then, an idea came to him. He thought of Nazz, but when the image of his parents faded, he was met with blackness.

"Thats odd," Edd murmured.

"What's weird?" Lee responded.

"I was thinking about Nazz, but she didn't show up."

"Are you refering to Nazz of the van Bartonshmeer clan?" Maylis asked.

"Why, yes. How did you know?" Edd inquired.

"She was one of the children, along with you and the Kanker sisters, that I transported here from America."

That made Eddy's eyes widen.

"Nazz is here!" he exclaimed. "Where?!"

Maylis frowned. "That is another matter I need to discuss." She pointed at yet another device. This one resembled a Scanimate machine. It had a pad with a keyboard on it, like a desk, and that was connected to a bronzed circle inlaid with a wire pattern.

"That is a modified transportation device Verderon had created. It's supposed to transport people from other dimensions to here, as it did for you all, but..." Maylis stopped, biting down slightly on her lip.

"Its broken. Isn't it," Eddy said flatly.

"...yes." Maylis grimaced. "I was never the most technologically adept of the Twelve."

"Then how were you able to track us down?" Eddy asked.

"Aura seers- people whose vision can directly see auras. I employed a number of them to help us find you all. Thankfully, it was not too difficult, thanks to your auras being 'otherworldly', as they had described it."

"So how are you doing on tracking down the others?" Eddy inquired.

"So far we believe there are otherwordly Elementals of Fire, Darkness, Life, and Water in the Forest of Memories, south of Shademoore."

"Okay..." Eddy said, not quite knowing what she meant.

"M... Miss Maylis..?" Mahiru said timidly, hands behind her back. "About me and Shin'ya..."

"Yes, you two were a special case," Maylis started.

"Special case!" Shin'ya growled, stepping in front of Mahiru. "And what the hell is that s'posed to mean?"

"As you two obviously know," said the vampire queen, "you two are seperate personalities, made by Mahiru's fractured mind." Maylis tapped her skull. "But that is not entirely the case."

Mahiru was behind Shin'ya, embarrassed and angered at the comment. She fumed, her hands twitching, an urge growing to wrap them around Maylis's neck and squeeze and squeeze and _squeeze_-

Shin'ya's outburst brought Mahiru back to the real world. "_Fractured_!? Shuddup! Mahiru ain't fractured or nothin'!"

"If that is what you believe, but I sense some doubt in your voice," Maylis said, causing Shin'ya to growl.

"Say one more word about Mahiru and I'll crack your oh-so-perfect %$#!ing head open," the darker personality muttered.

"Anyhow, you and Mahiru are not separate personalities, but separate souls," Maylis concluded.

This one definitely threw the Banba duo for a loop. Shin'ya blinked and recoiled in suprise, and all of Mahiru's dark thoughts vanished in an instant. "W-what?" they stammered simultaneously.

Maylis nodded . "When I first saw your shared body, I was surprised to see not one, but two auras, both of Elemental Darkness. Mahiru's aura was more passive, Shin'ya's more active. It was an unsettling experience, and in transporting you, it was necessary to separate your auras, and therefore your souls." The vampire queen patted the transport device. "This old thing can only handle one aura at a time."

"Well, how did I get OUT of Mahiru's body?" Shin'ya demanded.

Maylis again tapped the machine. "Somehow, when your auras were separated, your psyche was able to create a body for yourself, based on your memories in Mahiru's body."

Shin'ya fell silent, searching for something to say, but really, what could she? She had just found out that not only was she not a separate personality to Mahiru, but a totally seperate soul. How was that even possible?

"Umm, Miss Maylis? I got a question," Ed interjected, raising his hand as if he was in school.

"Yes?" the queen vampire said in Ed's direction.

"Why'd you bring us here? Is it because of Destiny and the other False Gods?"

May blinked. Her big Ed acting smart-? "Big Ed? Are you okay, pooky bear?" she asked warily.

"Yeah, I'm fine. My brain just feels bigger," he answered.

"Ah- inherent traits. I had forgotten about them," Maylis said.

"Inherent traits?" Lee asked.

"Yes," Maylis confirmed. "You see, we Saints did not get our titles because they sound good. Oh, no, we got them because they were the traits everyone saw in us. Mine," she said, pointing at herself, "is cunning, and that trait is passed on to all Darkness Elementals." She eyeballed the Banba duo, causing Mahiru to shrink back and Shin'ya to give her the stink-eye. "And Verderon's base trait was wisdom, so as time goes on, and Ed trains more in his powers he will become wiser."

"...Well how 'bout that," Lee said.

"Now," Maylis said grimly, "to answer Ed, I must say yes. The reason I transported you all here is because of the False Gods."

"The False Gods!" Eddy spat. "Delkaz and Berloz told us they were like regular Elementals on steroids! How the heck are we supposed to fight them?!"

"On a small advantage, you have numbers," Maylis said. "There are twelve of them and twenty-six of you."

"Yeah, but how'zat gonna matter when Destiny could just go back in time and slaughter us all in the past!?"

Maylis snorted. "Destiny is an arrogant fool."

"Really? Cause she sure did curbstomp Berloz," Eddy sniped.

"She did-?!" Maylis blinked. "You- you MET her? Face to face?"

"Yeah, and she tried to kill us!" Ed said.

Maylis growled in frustration, baring hideous fangs. "Damn her! While she is an unbelieveably powerful Elemental, she is a show-woman. She's the only False God whose name we know."

"You know her name?" Eddy asked.

"What I mean by that is we know what she calls herself. We in Shademoore do not know her true name or her motivation." Maylis said. "Hell's delight, the only reason we know that that there are twelve False Gods is because of an attack all of them initiated at a monestary not even three miles from here."

"Well that helps us out with, I don't know, NOTHING!" Marie spat. "And why us, of all people? What makes us all so special that we get ripped from our beds in the middle of the night to talk to a vampire about a bunch of ransackin' loonies?" Edd rolled his eyes- the Kanker sisters were "ransackin' loonies" themselves, so he thought it a bit rich of Marie to say that.

"Because," Maylis started "Initally I had a great many of Elementals and warriors to help me out on this mission, but needless to say, Destiny slaughtered them all."

"What!?" all eight of the kids yelled.

"Destiny chose her namesake according to her style." Maylis grimaced. "She has an affinity for analyzing her oppenents from birth so that she is fully prepared to fight them, and if she thinks that she can do something to make the fight with them easier, she will. She'll break their legs at birth, making that a weak point as they get older. She'll kill off a beloved family member in a way that makes her target think it's their fault, causing trauma. She will even go so far as to go to the blacksmith who is making the armour they wear the day of the fight, and cause the armor to have a small, barely noticeable flaw. Yes, she is one of the most dangerous Elementals on the planet. But as with all things, she has one weakness that I had to exploit, and that is where you all come in."

"And that weakness is...?" Shin'ya prompted.

"She may have dominion over time, but she cannot travel through space."

All of them besides Edd raised their brows, confused at the answer.

"Are you saying that she cannot move through separate dimensions?" Edd inquired.

"Yes. That is the specialty of the Aether element, and no living man or woman can do such a thing. Only Verderon could, and, as you saw..." Maylis sighed. "He is gone."

"So the reason you want us to fight them is that you think Destiny won't be able to exploit our past?" Edd said, putting the pieces together in his head.

Maylis nodded. "That's most of it," she said with a frown.

"Oh wow!" Eddy griped, gripping his head. "This is kind of a load to take in," the scam artist said with a groan.

"I do not blame you for being confused," Maylis said sympathetically. "The other Saints and I felt just the same after we gained our powers. The tremendous responsibility... the weight of the world upon our shoulders, the unmistakable feeling of helplessness. All of our effort accumulating to save what we love. It hits hard." She sighed.

"You all should go get some rest.. explore Shademoore, enjoy yourselves, all that. I'll tell you more about your mission tomorrow, and why I picked you all specifically."

"Thanks," Eddy said, grateful to get some fresh air.

Kit: Is this story going along a bit too quickly? I hope not...

Prince: I think were doing good afterall we introduced a character, showed how in heck the Eds and co got here pretty well.

Kit: Fair enough, I just don't want to be going too fast or too slow. I want to get a lot in without stretching it out or compressing it like a sandwich.

Prince: Touche. Maybe we should ask the fans! Their input is most important being the readers and all.

Kit: Yeah! That's an awesome thing to consider. Yo, fans, how do you like it so far? Any suggestions as to what we should be doing or what we shouldn't? Who do you wanna see a lot of? Do you think adding all of the Ed characters and the Black Class is a bad idea or a good one? Should we keep the cast in small herds or let them all join together?

Prince: Tell us in the comments section or Pm us (Or just me I like reading e-mails :-3) Remember, your input does matter.

Kit: again, thanks for reading and good morning, afternoon, and night to the lot of ya! B^)


End file.
